Who's Dumber: Bullhorn Lady With Her Fishnet Mask, Or The Genius With His Feet On Nancy Pelosi's Desk?

We got us some live ones!

(Photo by Samuel Corum/Getty Images)

It’s hard to know which Capitol Rioter has the worst judgment. It’s a deep, stupid bench, and the truth is, these are not very bright guys, and it got out of hand. But how can we crown a victor in this race to the bottom when each day brings another round of wacko pleadings?

Just this week, “Bullhorn Lady” and “That Dude Who Took a Picture of Himself With His Feet on Nancy Pelosi’s Desk” have submitted dueling motions in the competition for the Dumbass Crown.

First up is Rachel Powell, AKA “Bullhorn Lady,” AKA that nutter shouting out instructions so that the mob might more efficiently storm the Capitol on January 6, AKA a mother of eight who should really know better than to piss off the court with stupid antics.

And yet, here’s how Powell complied with Chief U.S. District Judge Beryl A. Howell’s order to “wear a mask whenever she leaves her residence.”

According to Pre-Trial Services, Powell cannot produce the mask for inspection by the court because she “threw it away per her attorney’s advisement.”

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This forced her attorney into the unenviable position of having to defend both his client and his own professional conduct in his answer to U.S. District Judge Royce Lamberth’s show cause order demanding to know why he shouldn’t throw Powell in the pokey for defying the court.

[A]t no time did undersigned counsel ever advise her to throw away the mask,” Powell’s lawyer Michael Engle wrote. “Rather, it was solely and exclusively the advice of counsel that she never wear that mask, or one like it, ever again.”

In the same Response, Engle asserted that his client almost always wears a “normal” mask, but since her bosses at the bookstore are vehemently anti-mask, she compromised by copying a mesh covering worn by singer Lana del Rey.

Only Del Rey’s bespoke mask contained a clear plastic barrier, and Powell’s appears to be made out of fishnet — whoopsie!

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But Richard “Bigo” Barnett, whose self-satisfied grin as he propped his feet up on Speaker Pelosi’s desk graced every front page in America, is giving Powell a run for the money. Barnett’s attorneys Joseph McBride and Steven Metcalf come out swinging in their memorandum supporting pre-trial release, accusing the government of a “distorted recitation of the facts.”

Here’s the note the defendant left in the Speaker’s office, which the government describes as reading “Nancy, Bigo was here, you bitch” in a “deliberate attempt to mislead this Court by casting Mr. Barnett in the worst possible light in order to ensure that pretrial release is not granted in this case.”

In fact, according to his lawyers, Ol’ Bigo used the much less offensive “biatch” — or tried to, anyway — which is actually a “term of endearment,” if you think about it.

Instead of writing the accusatory “You bitch” as the government falsely states, it only says “biatd” and without the word “you”. On information and belief, the “d” was meant to be two letters, “c” and “h” with the “c” connected to an “h” to spell the word “biatch” which is a slang and less offensive word for “bitch”. See https://idioms.thefreedictionary.com/biatch (defining “biatch” as “slang… used as a term of endearment or disparagement for another person” last visited on April 23, 2021).

It’s a bold strategy, Cotton! Right up there with blaming a pop star for forcing you to wear a fishnet face covering in defiance of a direct court order. We’ll see if it pays off for these two intrepid contestants in America’s Dumbest Insurrectionist.

United States v. Powell (1:21-cr-00179) [Docket via Court Listener]
United States v. Barnett (1:21-cr-00038) [Docket via Court Listener]


Elizabeth Dye lives in Baltimore where she writes about law and politics.