Credit: FBI/Court papers
Three Bucks Countians have pleaded guilty for their actions at the U.S. Capitol on the day it was attacked.
Gary Edwards, 68, of Northampton Township’s Churchville section, pleaded guilty to Monday to parading, demonstrating, or picketing in a Capitol building. He will be sentenced in December, according to a report by Philadelphia Inquirer journalist Jeremy Roebuck.
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“I entered the building,” Edwards reportedly said before U.S. District Judge James Boasberg. “I am guilty.”
Edwards was dimed out when someone reported to the FBI that Edwards’ wife posted her husband had entered the Capitol during the insurrection.
“Okay ladies let me tell you what happened as my husband was there inside the Capitol Rotunda. There was a small group of young men dressed in military garb who yelled ‘we r going in!’ They broke the barricade down, ran up the steps, broke a window and climbed in. They broke some furniture. Then proceeded to storm the floors. The crowd followed to stand on the balconies,” she allegedly wrote.
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The woman wrote on social media that her husband walked right into the Capitol and even chatted with police after teargas was fired. She defended the attack by noting people were upset over the outcome of the 2020 election, according to federal authorities.
Prosecutors were not just armed with the post but also a photograph of Edwards in the iconic structure and surveillance video also showed him in the building, according to court records.
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On Tuesday afternoon, Dawn Bancroft, a Doylestown-area gym owner who previously owned a home in Middletown Township’s Levittown section, and Diana Santos-Smith, who had resided in Bucks County, both pleaded guilty before U.S. District Judge Emmet Sullivan to parading, demonstrating, or picketing in a Capitol building. Bancroft avoided a more serious threats charge.
Credit: Court filing
“I would like to accept responsibility for what I did,” Bancroft said in court.
Santos-Smith told the judge: “I am guilty.”
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The women made their way into the Capitol during the insurrection after attending then-President Donald Trump’s rally that was not far away.
“We broke into the Capitol … we got inside, we did our part,” Bancroft said in a recorded video.
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“We were looking for Nancy to shoot her in the friggin’ brain but we didn’t find her,” she added.
Federal investigators wrote in court papers that they believed Bancroft was referring to Nancy Pelosi, the Democratic speaker of the U.S. House of Representatives and the third in the presidential line of succession.
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Santos-Smith initially lied to investigators about whether she entered the Capitol, which was caught on video.
Bancroft told FBI special agents that she recorded video during the incident that was sent to her children, but she later instructed them to delete it.
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The two women are set to be sentenced in the new year.
Sullivan, a Washington D.C. native who was appointed to federal benches by presidents Ronald Reagan, George H.W. Bush, and Bill Clinton, didn’t mince words when addressing the actions of Bancroft and Santos-Smith. He made clear their actions were very serious.
The judge called Bancroft’s statement about Pelosi “very troubling” and “outrageous.”
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Toward the end of the hearing, Sullivan called the January 6 insurrection a “domestic terrorist event.”
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