Sacramento-area woman charged in U.S. Capitol siege. Local Republican official also arrested
An Arbuckle home designer is the first Sacramento-area person to face charges in the Jan. 6 siege of the U.S. Capitol building, and a Republican activist from Sacramento was arrested Tuesday morning and is expected to face felony charges from the incident.
Valerie Elaine Ehrke is charged in U.S. District Court in Washington, D.C., with misdemeanor counts of entering a restricted building without lawful authority, disorderly conduct on Capitol grounds and demonstrating in the Capitol.
Ehrke could not be reached for comment, but she made a Zoom appearance in federal court in Sacramento Tuesday afternoon and was ordered to remain within the boundaries of the Eastern District of California, which stretches from Bakersfield to the Oregon state line.
“Basically, there is a prohibition on you getting on any flights and going back to D.C. unless it is for court appearances,” U.S. Magistrate Judge Kendall Newman told her.
Newman added that he also did not want her near the state Capitol on Wednesday, where California National Guard troops and California Highway Patrol officers have been posted since last week because of threats of armed attacks during President-elect Joe Biden’s inauguration.
“You are prohibited from going to the Capitol tomorrow,” Newman said.
He added that he wanted to caution her about using social media accounts.
“You don’t want to make your life more difficult,” Newman said, adding that she has First Amendment rights and that he was cautioning – not prohibiting her – from posting on such accounts.
A second suspect, Sacramento Republican activist Jorge Riley, was arrested Tuesday morning and is expected to face a felony count in court in Washington, a law enforcement source said.
Online records for the Sacramento County Main Jail show Riley, 41, was arrested by the FBI and was being booked late Tuesday. He was listed as “ineligible for bail.”
No court documents have been posted yet against Riley, who can be seen on video on Reddit.com describing breaking into the Capitol with others on Jan. 6 for a “peaceful, physical takeover of the Capitol.”
“We breached through there, we broke windows, we went into the door, we pushed our way in and then we just kept going further and further,” he said on the video, adding that this was his first visit to Washington, D.C.
Riley, who said he made his way to House Speaker Nancy Pelosi’s office, was corresponding secretary of the California Republican Assembly, as well as president of its Sacramento chapter, until he was asked to resign last week.
FBI tip leads to arrest
An FBI affidavit says an anonymous phone call to the FBI on Jan. 7 tipped agents that Ehrke “had posted a video to Facebook of her inside the U.S. Capitol building during the events described above.”
“A check of the public Facebook page belonging to Ehrke with the display name ‘Valerie Elaine Ehrke’ showed a video posted on January 6, 2021, at 2:09 p.m.,” the affidavit from FBI special Agent Michael B. Miller says. “The video showed a group of people entering the U.S. Capitol building with a caption reading, ‘We made it inside, right before they shoved us all out. I took off when I felt pepper spray in my throat! Lol.’
“The video is taken from the first-person perspective. Thus, it shows that whoever took the video also entered the U.S. Capitol with the rest of the group.”
The affidavit also notes that Ehrke’s Facebook profile page “shows a flaming ‘Q’ and a map commonly associated with QAnon, a far right conspiracy group.”
Court documents say the FBI determined Ehrke flew out of Sacramento International Airport to Reagan National Airport in Washington, D.C., on Jan. 5, and returned to Sacramento on Jan. 9.
“On January 13, 2021, FBI agents interviewed Ehrke at her place of employment,” the affidavit says, adding that Ehrke confirmed that she and a friend went to listen to President Trump, who was speaking at a rally to promote his false claims that President-elect Joe Biden had stolen the November election.
“She heard President Trump tell the crowd to go to the U.S. Capitol, and he would go with them,” the FBI affidavit says. “Ehrke instead went back to her hotel room, turned on the television, and saw a news story about how people were going into the U.S. Capitol building.
“Ehrke decided she wanted to be part of the crowd, and she walked to the U.S. Capitol. Ehrke stated that when she arrived at the U.S. Capitol building, she joined a group entering through a set of double doors and proceeded about fifteen (15) feet into the building.
“The crowd then started to push backward going out the doors through which they had entered. An unknown man grabbed her and pushed her outside.”
Calls to her design firm went unanswered Tuesday.
