Dona Bissey, a hairdresser and self-declared Trump supporter who promoted QAnon conspiracy theories on social media, has been sentenced to jail time for her involvement in the January 6 Capitol riot.
Bissey, who is a hairdresser, begged the judge to let her off easy, but the judge was not buying her newfound remorse, sentencing her to 14 days of incarceration and 60 hours of community service, WFYI reports.
During sentencing, U.S. District Judge Tanya Chutkan said she did so because Bissey had celebrated and bragged about her participation in what amounted to an attempted overthrow of the government.
“The fact that she subscribes to bizarre conspiracy theories, that’s her right. That’s something she is allowed to do as an American,’ Chutkan said.”
Bissey pleaded guilty to a misdemeanor and had begged the judge for leniency, claiming that she is being ostracized in her small Indiana town and her salon has suffered a collapse of business. She specifically requested probation in lieu of jail time, in part because she was unvaccinated and was afraid she would catch COVID and die in a correctional facility.
The QAnon conspiracy theory, which borrows from centuries-old anti-Semitic propaganda, asserts that the federal government and U.S. society are under the control of a cabal of Satan-worshipping sex traffickers who consume the flesh of children — and Donald Trump was fighting to stop it.
“Justice Department prosecutor Joshua Rothstein said Bissey appears to be an avid consumer of other conspiracy theories, including that the coronavirus is a ‘hoax pandemic’ and that the COVID-19 vaccine is part of a Jewish plot to murder people,” said the report. “She also appeared to believe the pandemic was foreshadowed by ‘predictive programming’ during the opening ceremony for the 2012 Olympics in London.”
