A mother and son from New York have received their sentences from a federal judge after criminal allegations over their participation in the attack on the Capitol on January 6, 2021.
Maryann Mooney-Rondon, the mother, was sentenced to a year of home detention, and her son, Rafael Rondon, was also sentenced to a year of home detention per a federal press release — though for the younger Rondon, that period of punishment will only begin after a separate stint in actual prison stemming from a criminal case over his possession of an unregistered firearm. The type of firearm found by authorities during a search connected to the January 6 charges is termed a sawed-off shotgun, and for the firearms charge to which he pleaded guilty, he got 14 months.
For both members of the Rondon family, their periods of home detention — whether starting more quickly or after a jail sentence — will be part of five-year stints of probation. Both of them were also ordered to perform 350 hours of community service.
Reports including that federal press release say the pair took emergency escape hoods from the Capitol while on the complex during the riot. The hoods are outfitted with respiratory protections. They also both assisted in the theft of a laptop from an office in use by then-Speaker of the House Nancy Pelosi, a California Democrat. (Both Rondons admitted to this.)
The older member of the family had a slightly strange, unsubstantiated, partial explanation for what happened, “suggesting that the man who stole Pelosi’s laptop was part of a broader scheme” NBC said in recent reporting. Though the outlet didn’t specify any further details on this imagined scheme that might have been shared by Mooney-Rondon, there remain persistent but unsubstantiated claims of secret law enforcement plots propelling the violence. During a recent Congressional hearing, far-right House member Clay Higgins, a Louisiana Republican, shared an image of white-painted buses that he adamantly insisted had carried secret law enforcement cooperators/agents/something roughly similar. The Congressman presented no substantiating evidence.
