N.J. mother avoids jail, sentenced to home detention for entering Capitol during Jan. 6 riot – NJ.com

An Essex County woman who triumphantly posed for a picture inside the U.S. Capitol during the Jan. 6 riot will serve two months of home detention and 36 months of probation, a federal judge in Washington, D.C. ruled Tuesday.

Rasha Abual-Ragheb, a single mother from Fairfield, begged the judge for no jail time, sobbing that it would be a hardship on her two school-age children, who she’s had to pull out of class and home school due to bullying following her arrest earlier this year.

“I never meant to cause any harm,” she said in her address to Judge Carl J. Nichols, in a short but emotional expression of remorse moments before her sentencing.

She pleaded guilty in August to parading, demonstrating or picketing in the Capitol, a misdemeanor.

Federal prosecutors wanted a 30-day jail term for Abual-Ragheb, arguing her social media posts were troubling, mentioning civil war, bringing guns to the nation’s capital and a fighting mentality that authorities would “have to kill her” to stop her. They started two days after the general election, and were incredulous that Donald Trump did not win.

On Tuesday, Assistant U.S. Attorney Michael Liebman acknowledged that with her lack of a criminal record, that if she’d committed the crime “at a different federal building on a different day,” the government would not be asking for incarceration.

But because she was “at that building on that day, Jan. 6,” Abual-Ragheb should serve a small jail sentence as a deterrent for her actions, and for others in the future, Liebman said.

Federal probation authorities had recommended 18 months of probation in her case.

Abual-Ragheb’s attorney, Elita C. Amato, reiterated that her client went to Washington on Jan. 6 for a protest, and to support then-President Donald Trump. She was clad in clad in a tutu for protesting, and certainly not dressed in any clothing that would suggest she wanted civil war or combat.

Amato said some of Abual-Ragheb’s social media posts were “stupid,” but she had no intention of violence. She was in the Capitol for just a few minutes, took a picture and left.

The judge said he found Abual-Ragheb’s remorse genuine, her social media posts indeed “troubling,” and took into account her children.

“All in all, I have every expectation and belief that the defendant will not protest in the Capitol or commit other crimes,” he said. But there needs to be a deterrent too, he said, agreeing that Jan. 6 was “no ordinary riot.”

So the judge doubled the probation to 36 months, added the two months of home detention, and a $500 fine.

In court filings before Tuesday’s sentencing, Abual-Ragheb’s attorney wrote that her client’s path to the Capitol came from a genuine belief that her vote was not counted in the 2020 election – her first.

When Abual-Ragheb searched a New Jersey voting registry after the election, it came back without her name. Amato supplied screenshots of the search in court filings.

Interestingly, Liebman said he searched the database in court Tuesday and found Abual-Ragheb’s name and registration, and said it appears Abual-Ragheb searched her last name with an underscore, not a hyphen.

While Liebman said Abual-Ragheb made a keystroking error, Amato said that may be, but her client believed she was disenfranchised.

As for her words and posts, Amato wrote that her client, “believed the stories about people’s kids being taken by elected Democrat officials and so as a mother she inarticulately wrote that someone would have to kill her before taking her children away.”

Amato also described Abual-Ragheb as a native of Jordan who grew up wealthy, but with a strict father who arranged her first marriage. The marriage ended in divorce in the United States after physical and emotional abuse.

Abual-Ragheb believes her family considers her divorce a shame to the family, and she’d be in danger of being killed if she returned to Jordan. She is a naturalized citizen, married a second time in the U.S., but is divorced again due to more physical and emotional abuse, an since her arrest has suffered medical issues, as well as years of mental abuse due to her relationships.

In her remarks to the judge Tuesday, Abual-Ragheb gave a teary, sometimes rambling, address in which she recalled growing up in a country with a dictator king who could make people disappear.

She said her words of “having to kill me” are akin to telling a loved one in a moment of frustration, “I am going to kill you.”

“It’s just a saying,” she said. She said she raised her children to respect the police, supports the Second Amendment, but would never own a gun. And she said she attended the Jan. 6 rally not with weapons, but with a “bottle of water and a phone.”

It concluded with a pledge of patriotism, saying she did not really care who won the election, but believed New Jersey failed to count her vote, “I just simply wanted to be counted.”

“God bless you, and God bless the United States,” she told the judge.

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Kevin Shea may be reached at kshea@njadvancemedia.com.