Northern California woman charged in Jan. 6 insurrection faces sentencing after guilty plea
A Northern California woman who was one of the first defendants to plead guilty in the Jan. 6 Capitol riot is scheduled to be sentenced Friday in federal court in Washington, D.C., in a case in which prosecutors are recommending no time in custody.
Valerie Elaine Ehrke, a home designer from Arbuckle who traveled to Washington last January to see then-President Donald Trump speak at a rally protesting the outcome of the November presidential election, pleaded guilty in June to a single misdemeanor count of parading, picketing or demonstrating in a government building.
Ehrke could have faced up to six months in custody and a $5,000 fine, but Assistant U.S. Attorney Kevin Birney filed a sentencing memo last week asking a judge to sentence her to three years of probation, 40 hours of community service and $500 in restitution.
Birney noted that the attack on the U.S. Capitol “threatened the peaceful transfer of power after the 2020 Presidential election, injured more than one hundred law enforcement officers, and resulted in more than a million dollars’ worth of property damage.”
Prosecutor: ‘Rare case’ that calls for probation
But he added that Ehrke’s participation in the events of that day was limited and that hers is “the rare case where a probationary sentence is appropriate.”
“The government is requesting a probationary sentence in this unusual case based on the fact that the defendant was inside of the Capitol for only about a minute; entered only about fifteen feet into the building; did not engage in any destruction of property or violence; and had limited social media activity regarding the event,” Birney wrote.
Ehrke, 54, is one of four Sacramento-area defendants charged in the insurrection and the only one to plead guilty to date.
Her sentencing is scheduled to occur one day before a “Justice for J6” rally is scheduled to take place at the U.S. Capitol in support of the 608 individuals facing federal charges stemming from the assault on the Capitol.
Court documents say Ehrke flew to Washington on Jan. 5, then joined a friend the next day to attend the rally and see Trump speak.
She went for ‘love of country’
“I had never seen a president or even an ex president speak,” Ehrke wrote in a pre-sentencing letter to U.S. District Judge Paul L. Friedman, adding that she went because of her “love of country.”
“The only other time I’d been to DC was to help chaperone my daughter’s 8th grade trip to DC a few years ago. I loved that trip. Seeing our country’s buildings and monuments filled me with pride.
“President Trump had been tweeting invitations to attend the January 6th rally in the weeks preceding the event, but I did not decide to attend until just a few days beforehand. The only plan I had was to go to the White House Ellipse to listen to President Trump’s speech.”
Ehrke wrote that she left the speech early and went back to her hotel because she was cold. Once in her room, she saw television news reports that people were inside the Capitol, she wrote.
“Having traveled a long way to attend this rally, I decided to put on an extra layer of clothing and walk to the Capitol,” she wrote.
She saw a group of five men walking who she believed were Proud Boys, she wrote, and walked with them for a bit because she was alone and felt safer in a group.
“I asked one of them if they were Proud Boys and he said that no, they were three-percenters,” she wrote. “I had never heard of them and I did not know if I was insulting him or paying him a compliment.
“As we got closer to the Capitol building, I stopped following that group of men.”
The Southern Poverty Law Center calls 3 Percenters part of the anti-government militia movement whose name “stems from the dubious historical claim that only 3 percent of American colonists fought against the British during the War of Independence.”
Facebook posts chronicle her walk to Capitol
In its sentencing memo, the government says Ehrke began recording videos as she walked to the Capitol and posted them to Facebook, including one saying she was “on the way to the breached Capitol building.”
She arrived at 3:11 p.m. and entered through the North Door on the Senate side of the Capitol, the memo says.
“The doors were already open at the time, and the defendant followed many others through the entrance,” the sentencing memo says. “That door opens into a hallway. The defendant filmed her entrance through this door and into the hallway.
“As Ms. Ehrke is entering the building, one can hear an alarm sounding throughout the Capitol: a loud, high-pitched, continuous beeping, similar to a smoke alarm. Surveillance video also shows Ms. Ehrke’s entrance.
“The defendant travels a very short distance — she later estimated about fifteen feet—before she had to stop at the back of the crowd.”
Police confronted the group and pushed it back out of the building. “All told, the defendant was in the building for approximately one minute,” the memo says.
Outside the Capitol, Ehrke continued to post to her Facebook account, which used a profile photo that included a flaming “Q,” which the government notes is associated with the QAnon conspiracy movement.
“We made it inside, right before they shoved us all out,” she wrote in a post. “I took off when I felt pepper spray in my throat! Lol.”
FBI questioned her within days of riot
The FBI interviewed Ehrke six days later, and she gave a “detailed description” of her activities in Washington, court files say.
She also write a letter to federal officials expressing “remorse about what happened at the Capitol that day,” the sentencing memo states.
“She stated that she did not know about ‘the madness’ that was happening inside of the Senate Chamber,” the memo says. “She also stated that she does not condone the behavior of people who participated in that madness, and she is ‘deeply sorry that people lost their lives on that day.’”
Ehrke’s letter was filed by her attorney, Robert Holley, along with letters from 17 friends and family members “showing her unselfish involvement in her community, and her commendable profession in architectural design,” Holley wrote.
All of the letters are redacted to remove the names of the writers and other identifying information.
“It appears that among those charged in this occurrence, Ms. Ehrke was at least one of the last to enter the building and one of the first to leave — with no other involvement,” Holley wrote, adding that “the ends of justice are satisfied” by the judge adopting the prosecutor’s recommended sentence of probation.
This story was originally published September 17, 2021 at 5:00 AM with the headline "Northern California woman charged in Jan. 6 insurrection faces sentencing after guilty plea."