WASHINGTON — A conservative influencer was arrested in California on Jan. 6 charges, including helping to steal a table from a Capitol conference room that the FBI says was used to assault officers just feet away at the lower west tunnel, where some of the most brutal attacks on law enforcement took place.
Isabella Deluca, a fervent supporter of former President Donald Trump, was arrested in Irvine, California, on Friday, according to court records unsealed on Monday. She faces five charges, including a count of theft of government property.
Deluca, according to the FBI, can be seen “removing, and aiding and abetting other rioters in removing, a table from ST-2M” — an office in the Capitol — “and passing it to rioters outside through another broken window.” The table “was subsequently used to assault law enforcements officers guarding the Lower West Terrace Tunnel,” the FBI said.
Deluca has racked up hundreds of thousands of followers on social media and was formerly an ambassador for the conservative group Turning Points USA. She says in an online bio that she interned for Former Rep. Lee Zeldin, R-N.Y., and for Rep. Paul Gosar, R-Ariz. (Zeldin left office in 2023 and lost his New York gubernatorial race in 2022.)
The FBI first received a tip about Deluca just three days after the Capitol attack and interviewed Deluca on Jan. 21, 2021, the day after Joe Biden’s inauguration, according to the bureau.
“Fight back or let politicians steal [an] election? Fight back!” Deluca allegedly tweeted on the afternoon of Jan. 6.
Images in the FBI affidavit show Deluca helping to pass the table out of the broken window and show that her fellow Jan. 6 defendant Timothy Desjardins, who was arrested in 2021, picked up a wooden table leg and used that leg to assault officers. (Last year, Dejardins was sentenced to 18 years in prison on state charges, separate from his Jan. 6 charges. Plea negotiations are ongoing in his Jan. 6 case.) Another rioter threw the table top at officers, the FBI said.
In an Instagram comment after the attack, Deluca posted that she got “maced pretty bad about three times” and that she “used milk to get the mace/tear gas out of my eyes.”
Deluca later posted she had “mixed feelings” about Jan. 6 and then posted that Trump should declare martial law, according to the FBI.
Deluca did not immediately respond to a request for comment from NBC News.
More than 1,300 people have been arrested in connection with the Jan. 6 attack on the Capitol, and prosecutors have secured more than 950 convictions. About 500 people have been sentenced to periods of incarceration that have ranged from a few days behind bars to 22 years in federal prison.
Source: | This article originally belongs to Nbcnews.com
