Jan. 6 "we need weapons" lady wants to rescind guilty plea
Source: Business Insider
A Beverly Hills salon owner who stormed the Capitol wants to rescind her guilty plea to a serious January 6 charge
C. Ryan Barber
Fri, May 20, 2022, 4:33 PM·3 min read
A Beverly Hills salon owner asked Friday to rescind her guilty plea to the most serious charge she faced from the January 6, 2021, attack on the Capitol, arguing that federal prosecutors "bullied" her into confessing in court.
Gina Bisignano had pleaded guilty last year to six charges stemming from the January 6 insurrection, including obstruction of an official proceeding, which carries a maximum sentence of 20 years in prison. In the court filing asking to undo her guilty plea, Bisignano pointed not only to the pressure she felt from prosecutors but also to a recent ruling in which her judge threw out another January 6 defendant's obstruction charge based on a novel interpretation of the statute.
Bisignano's defense team cited the March decision from Judge Carl Nichols, a Trump appointee, who ruled that the obstruction statute can only stand if a defendant is accused of "some action with respect to a document, record or other object."
Prosecutors have interpreted the statute more broadly to charge accused Capitol rioters with disrupting Congress' certification of the 2020 election results. To date, no other judge on the federal trial court in Washington, DC, has adopted Nichols' narrower reading.
Other judges have described Nicholas' interpretation as "strained" and "unnatural." ...
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Read more: https://news.yahoo.com/beverly-hills-salon-owner-stormed-203343220.html
Original Business Insider link (paywalled): https://www.businessinsider.com/beverly-hills-salon-owner-january-6-capitol-attack-guilty-plea-2022-5