A mother and son from New York are among the latest Trump supporters to be arrested by federal authorities for participating in the January riot at the Capitol. The duo in question includes Maryann Mooney-Rondon and Rafael Rondon, who were taken into custody on Friday after having been discovered to have entered the office of House Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D-Calif.) amid the Capitol violence. HuffPost notes that “Footage and videos show that Mooney-Rondon and Rondon made their way throughout the Capitol building,” adding that the two “were spotted in the rotunda, in the gallery of the Senate and in House Speaker Nancy Pelosi’s office.”
Those who entered Pelosi’s office and the floor of the Senate have faced felony criminal charges. Paul Hodgkins, one such rioter, was recently required to begin an eight-month prison sentence over his actions at the Capitol, where he toted a Trump flag onto the Senate floor as if claiming it for the then-president. In Pelosi’s office, Mooney-Rondon — the mother in the pair of newly arrested rioters — can be seen on video taking cables out of a laptop before someone else picked up the device. She and her son took a couple of emergency escape hoods from the Capitol, which the two were wearing as they left the Capitol — and which agents later discovered at their residence.
Maryann Mooney-Rondon and Rafael Rondon are among over 600 Trump supporters to have been arrested so far in connection to the Capitol violence. Meanwhile, the House committee investigating that violence is continuing its work, including through the issuance of subpoenas to targets including individuals connected to rallies that preceded the riot. The committee has also subpoenaed former top Trump aides like former White House chief of staff Mark Meadows and former top Trump adviser Steve Bannon, who the panel is demanding provide documents and testimony this month. Predictably, Trump has lashed out against the work of the committee — and he has also expressed support for the rioters themselves, insisting recently that Americans’ “hearts and minds are with the people being persecuted so unfairly relating to the January 6th protest concerning the Rigged Presidential Election.” (Obviously, what happened wasn’t merely a “protest.”)
