Background: Violent rioters supporting President Donald Trump storm the Capitol in Washington, Wednesday, Jan. 6, 2021 (AP Photo/John Minchillo, File). Inset: Christina Marie Praser-Fair (DOJ court filing).
A South Carolina tea shop owner shut down her store for an “emergency road trip” on Jan. 6 to Washington, D.C., and ended up breaching the Capitol building, federal prosecutors say.
Christina Mari Praser-Fair, the owner of Cornwallis House Tea Co. in Winnsboro, around 35 miles north of Columbia, has been outspoken about her time at the Capitol that day, according to federal court records, going so far as to tell a local news station a year later that she “had no regrets” about going.
“We went because we just wanted to be a part of something, you know, like stand up for what we believe in, add to the numbers,” she told a local news station, according to federal prosecutors, who arrested Praser-Fair on Thursday.
Praser-Fair placed such a high priority on attending Donald Trump’s “Stop the Steal” rally — during which Trump encouraged his supporters to “fight like hell” to keep him in office despite losing to President Joe Biden — that she shut down her tea shop.
“[T]he company will be closed this Wednesday and Thursday while Christina and Jenny take their emergency road trip to D.C. to attend the Trump [rally],” a voicemail from Cornwallis House Tea said on Jan. 6, 2021, according to the complaint.
That road trip ultimately ended with them joining the mob that violently breached the Capitol as Congress had begun to certify Biden’s electoral win. Prosecutors say that after joining her fellow Trump supporters in walking from the ex-president’s speech at the Ellipse to the Capitol building, Praser-Fair and her son walked inside the Capitol at 2:22 p.m., some 10 minutes after protesters first smashed through windows and forced open doors.
Although Praser-Fair had told local reporters on Jan. 8 that she had stayed “very close to the entrances,” prosecutors say evidence shows the opposite — that, in fact, she was seen throughout the building that day.
“[A] comprehensive review of surveillance / closed-caption television (CCTV) video captured on January 6, 2021 from inside the U.S. Capitol building revealed Praser-Fair and her son, a minor, on 17 different cameras inside the building,” the probable cause affidavit says. Her “approximate path of travel” allegedly included going through the Capitol Crypt, going up from the first floor to the second floor, crossing the Rotunda, going through Statuary Hall, and walking through “multiple office hallways” and hallways outside the House of Representatives.
She ultimately exited the building at 2:49 p.m., almost 30 minutes after entering.
In the days following the riot, she told local CBS affiliate WLTX that she and her family “felt like we needed to go” to Trump’s rally, according to the complaint. A year later, Praser-Fair told the station that she was surprised at the backlash against the rioters, but she had no regrets about going to Washington, D.C., that day.
She is now charged with multiple disorderly conduct and trespassing misdemeanors that carry a combined potential sentence of three years in prison.
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