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Woman Files Suit Alleging Assault, Battery and Excessive Force at Hands of DC Police on Jan. 6

  A woman who felt it was her civic duty to protest the certification of the 2020 election on Jan. 6, 2021, has now filed a civil suit again...

 A woman who felt it was her civic duty to protest the certification of the 2020 election on Jan. 6, 2021, has now filed a civil suit against Washington, D.C., and its Metropolitan Police Department, alleging that she was brutally assaulted at the hands of police officers amid the chaos at the Capitol building that day.

Victoria C. White, who was seen on video earlier in the day trying to stop a man from breaking a window on the Capitol Building, alleges that she was battered with a police baton nearly 40 times in the space of just four minutes, resurrecting trauma from years of physical domestic abuse.

She filed a lawsuit on Wednesday, one day ahead of the one-year anniversary of the Capitol Hill incursion when several bad actors and over-zealous Trump supporters stormed the federal facilities amid an otherwise overwhelmingly peaceful protest against the certification of the electoral college.

“Nothing will ever right the wrong committed against Ms. White, but making sure that she is compensated for the egregious injuries that she suffered on January 6, 2021, is certainly a start,” White’s attorney, Joseph McBride, said in a statement, which was posted to Twitter along with unsettling footage of the alleged assault of his client.


He stated that his client — a Minnesota-raised, homeschooling mother of four with a “newfound relationship with Jesus Christ” that helped her recover from ten years of domestic abuse in 2016 — traveled to Washington, D.C., on that fateful day driven by the sincere belief that the election was stolen from then-President Donald Trump.

“She felt, deep in her gut and in her heart that President Donald J. Trump had wrongfully lost the election,” he stated. “Therefore, she felt compelled to go when she heard that people were going to protest the election results on January 6th in Washington, D.C.”

“Her decision to go was less of a choice and more of a civic duty, as she truly felt the election was stolen,” he said.

As ABC 6 reported, the lawsuit asserts that White “did not harm, threaten or pose any threat to any federal or state agent while exercising her First Amendment and other rights” and alleges that she was “beaten with a metal baton approximately 35 times and punched in the face five times at the U.S. Capitol on January 6, 2021, by a Metropolitan Police Officer believed to be a lieutenant, aided and abetted by other police officers.”

White is seeking at least $1,000,000 in damages, which she hopes to secure in a jury trial.

In April 2021, White was charged in connection to her presence on Capitol Hill that day with a laundry list of infractions, ranging from knowingly entering restricted grounds without lawful authority to disorderly conduct to violent entry to obstruction of justice.

She pled not guilty in September. Court documents stated that White was seen on video arguing with other protesters who were trying to break a glass window, the Brainerd Dispatch reported. After Jan. 6, FBI investigators received an anonymous tip that she was involved, which led to her arrest. She maintains that she did not break the law.

Despite the overtures made by House Speaker Nancy Pelosi and her fellow Democrats last week as they memorialized the events of that fateful day, the only person who died as a result of deliberate violence on Capitol Hill was Trump supporter Ashli Babbit, who was shot and killed by a member of the Capitol Police when she and a group attempted to enter a broken window which led into a corridor near the House chambers.

Capitol Police officer Brian Sicknick, whose life is unquestionably just as valuable as Babbit’s, sadly passed away as well … after succumbing to a stroke at police headquarters after he’d left the chaotic scene of that day.

Two other officers who were “killed” on Jan. 6 died of suicide.

A third was killed by a crazed, left-wing protester in a completely unrelated attack.

In February.

Yet the names of these officers, which are no doubt still entirely worthy of homage and respect, have been touted as being the victims of White and her fellow protesters.

Police brutality is never something that should be taken lightly, whether it is inflicted upon unarmed black male crime suspects or unarmed white Trump supporters at the Capitol in the midst of a contested election.

In equal measure, allegations of police brutality ought to be subject to fair scrutiny and due process for the officers involved, regardless of the accuser or alleged assailant.

The very sick reality of White’s case versus other high-profile cases of police brutality and the overwhelming narrative surrounding Jan. 6 (ABC 6, for example, referred to the Jan. 6 incursion as an “insurrection,” a statement of apparent fact that many would argue has actually been rather exhaustively debunked) is that the way the media and politicians react to White’s alleged assault and that of unarmed black men, like Jacob Blake or George Floyd, is worlds apart.

Consider this: In 2020, a group of protesters tried to storm the White House in Washington, D.C., amid protests over Floyd’s death. If Jan. 6 was an act of terrorism or insurrection, no doubt we could apply the same standards to an attempt to storm the residence of the President of the United States, right?

So where are the charges for this riotous act, and why was there never any congressional panel to examine who inspired it and why, nor hundreds of arrests made and federal charges filed against defendants who are kept in dubiously humane conditions like veritable banana republic political prisoners?

This is not to say that there weren’t people who broke the law on Jan. 6, nor that there isn’t ample reason to investigate who was behind the drive to storm the Capitol — in fact, I think our nation would only benefit from more light being shed on these circumstances.

This is to say that no one is above the law: neither members of the Capitol Police and D.C. Metro Police, nor left- and right-wing protesters alike.

Yet there is a glaring disparity in the way the federal government has filed charges and held officials and officers accountable for the events of that day — and it is glaringly political.

When it comes to finding out the truth about Jan. 6, we must leave no stone unturned.

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