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One of Paul Gosar's former interns has been charged with storming the Capitol on Jan. 6 • Arizona Mirror [1]
['Jerod Macdonald-Evoy', 'More From Author', '- March']
Date: 2024-03
An Arizona Republican congressman hired a woman who participated in the Jan. 6 insurrection while she was under investigation for breaching the U.S. Capitol and helping others obtain impromptu weapons that day.
U.S. Rep. Paul Gosar hired Isabella Maria DeLuca as an intern in late 2022, well after she had already been contacted by the FBI and was currently under investigation. DeLuca worked for Gosar from Sept. 12, 2022, to Jan. 30, 2023, according to congressional pay data.
In a recently unsealed indictment, the FBI accuses DeLuca of breaching the Capitol and handing out pieces of a broken table to rioters outside the building, who went on to use them as weapons against police in an area that became known for its violent clashes.
Gosar’s congressional office confirmed that DeLuca worked as an intern but said they had no knowledge of her participation in Jan. 6 or that she was under investigation.
“Isabella DeLuca was an intern in Congressman Gosar’s office for three months beginning in the Fall of 2022. We have no knowledge of any alleged participation in activities on January 6, 2021,” Anthony Foti, spokesperson Congressman Gosar said in an emailed statement to the Arizona Mirror.
DeLuca also had an unpaid volunteer position for the conservative Tempe-based Turning Point USA. In a statement to the Arizona Mirror, TPUSA said that she was not an employee, though she was previously a TPUSA chapter president.
“She was an unpaid volunteer ambassador, one of over 200 in the program,” TPUSA spokesman Andrew Kolvet said in an emailed statement. Kolven added that this was the first the organization had heard of her involvement in the events of Jan. 6 or that she was under investigation.
Court documents reveal that authorities began investigating DeLuca just days after the violent riot that forced congressional officials to flee for safety from the rampaging mob. The FBI received a tip three days later identifying DeLuca as a possible suspect and pointed authorities to some of her now-deleted social media posts. On Jan. 21, 2021, the FBI interviewed DeLuca, who said she never entered any restricted areas of the Capitol.
But video reviewed by the FBI showed DeLuca in restricted areas of the Capitol recording videos on her phone. And she was captured on video handing pieces of a table to other people through a window that had been smashed in.
The Lower West Terrace of the Capitol, where DeLuca was photographed and caught on video, was the location of some of the most vicious fighting between police and rioters. It is also where one death occurred during the day.
The FBI obtained a search warrant for DeLuca’s social media and found she spoke about being tear-gassed and her wish that President Donald Trump would declare martial law so he could overturn his election loss.
She also defended her actions to others.
“I’m wondering why you support the breaking into the capitol,” one user asked DeLuca in a direct message on Instagram. She replied, “According to the constitution it’s our house.”
This sentiment would be echoed later in a statement she released about Jan. 6 on Jan. 14, 2021.
“I was there on Jan. 6. I have mixed feelings. People went to the Capitol building because that’s Our House and that’s where we go to take our grievances,” DeLuca said. “People feel, as do I that an election was stolen from them and it was allowed.”
There is no evidence that the election was stolen, though the Trump campaign sought to convince Republicans in Congress to use that fabricated rationale as a pretext to reject the presidential electors Biden won in battleground states — including Arizona — and replace them with fraudulent Trump electors.
The next day, DeLuca was messaging others about her hopes that Trump would declare martial law to overturn the election results.
“So it talks about how to save the election with all the fraud that’s happened. I can see from the notes that he suggests martial law,” DeLuca said in a direct message to another user. “If Trump declares martial law in 7 states, his campaign allies could take control of the state’s (sic) ballots & overturn the results of the election in Trump’s favor. Which would be ideal.”
DeLuca also confirmed in a direct message obtained by the FBI that she “deleted a lot” of her own posts on Instagram.
“Based on my knowledge, training, and experience, people who commit criminal acts will often delete information about those acts from social media accounts in an attempt to thwart any subsequent criminal investigation,” the agent in charge of the case said in the indictment.
DeLuca faces five misdemeanor charges including theft of government property. DeLuca was taken into custody on Friday in Irvine, California and is awaiting an initial hearing in Washington D.C.
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