Jacquelyn Starer (DOJ).
A Massachusetts doctor who admitted to punching a police officer in the head during the Capitol riot will spend the better part of a year behind bars.
Jacquelyn Starer, 71, was sentenced to nine months in prison on Thursday. The former gynecologist and addiction medicine specialist had pleaded guilty in April to eight charges relating to her role in the insurrection, including two felony counts of obstruction of law enforcement during a civil disorder and assaulting, resisting, or impeding certain officers.
According to prosecutors, Starer drove from Massachusetts to Washington, D.C., to attend Donald Trump’s “Stop the Steal” rally objecting to the certification of President Joe Biden’s 2020 electoral win. She then joined the crowd of thousands of Trump supporters outside the Capitol, eventually entering the building at 2:51 p.m., almost 45 minutes after the building was initially breached.
She made her way to the Rotunda, where prosecutors say she shoved rioters to get to the front of the crowd — and even pushed away a fellow rioter who tried to hold her back.
After that, she struck an officer with the Metropolitan Police Department — identified in court filings only as “M.B.” — with a closed fist.
“F—— b—-!” she allegedly yelled at the officer as she returned to the line of rioters.
An FBI tipster had told officials that Starer “bragged to a mutual acquaintance that she ‘was prepared’ for it, with a mesh knife-proof shirt and bottles of pepper spray,” according to prosecutors.
In court on Thursday, Starer reportedly apologized to the officer. However, the judge overseeing Starer’s case said he was baffled as to what could have motivated the doctor that day.
“You’re a very educated person. A person with a lot of life experience,” U.S. District Judge Tim Kelly, a Trump appointee, said to Starer, according to Washington, D.C., CBS affiliate WUSA reporter Jordan Fischer. “I can’t explain why you were trying to get into the bowels of the Capitol like a heat-seeking missile.”
Prosecutors had sought a sentence of more than two years behind bars — 27 months — while Starer asked for a term of three years of probation, including a term of home confinement.
Since the Jan. 6 Capitol attack, nearly 1,500 people have been charged for related crimes, prosecutors said.
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