A Texas woman who was charged in the Jan. 6 Capitol riot filed a motion in federal court seeking permission to travel so she could attend a weekend trip to Mexico.
Jenny Cudd, a small business owner in Midland, Texas, was charged with violent entry or disorderly conduct and entering a restricted building. She live-streamed from within the U.S. Capitol Building as a pro-Trump mob stormed Congress last month, according to a criminal complaint filed in January. Five people died as a result of the riot.
Cudd’s attorneys filed a motion Monday in the U.S. District Court for the District of Columbia to allow her to travel despite the charges.
“Prior to the alleged offense at issue, Ms. Cudd planned and prepaid for a weekend retreat with her employees for the dates of February 18 through February 21, 2021, in Riviera Maya, Mexico,” the motion said. “This is a work-related bonding retreat for employees and their spouses.”
Cudd is currently out on a recognizance bond and the conditions of her release include check-ins with pretrial services and to “stay away’ from Washington, D.C., unless for court hearings and meetings with her attorneys.
According to the FBI, Cudd described being part of a crowd that forced their way into the building on Facebook Live. The criminal complaint against her included a quote from a recorded statement by Cudd, where she said, “I f—ing charged the Capitol today” and “Hell yes, I am proud of my actions.”
“We just pushed, pushed, and pushed, and yelled ‘go’ and yelled ‘charge.’ We just pushed and pushed, and we got it,” Cudd said. She added later, “We did break down the Nancy Pelosi’s office door.”
The complaint cited a local television interview Cudd had two days after the incident at the Capitol, where she said “we the Patriots did storm the U.S. Capitol” and that she would “absolutely” do it again, the complaint said.
It appears that the FBI is referencing an interview with Texas NBC affiliate KWES on Jan 8., where Cudd made those same statements.
Cudd also told KWES that despite using the term “we” in her Facebook Live, she did not mean to include herself in her statements and was using “we” generally. Cudd told KWES that she did not personally break any laws.
“Those things did happen by other people, but I was not a part of that,” Cudd said. “I said in reference to it that ‘we the patriots stormed the Capitol,’ and some people went into different offices and different things like that.”
The attorneys who filed the motion on behalf of Cudd did not immediately respond to a request for comment from NBC News. Cudd has not yet entered a plea to the charges against her, according to court records.