Politics

Trans Jan 6 rioter is begging Marjorie Taylor Greene to get her into a women’s prison

Jessica Watkins/Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene
Jessica Watkins/Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene Photo: Booking photo/Shutterstock

Jessica Watkins – who was sentenced to eight-and-a-half years in prison in connection to her leadership role in the January 6 Insurrection – is worried about being sent to a men’s prison because she’s transgender. She’s asking her followers to get Reps. Marjorie Taylor Greene (R-GA), Matt Gaetz (R-FL), and Jim Jordan (R-OH) to pressure the Federal Bureau of Prisons (FBOP) to place her in a women’s prison. Greene, Gaetz, and Jordan have all expressed anti-LGBTQ+ views in the past and are unlikely to support trans women being housed in women’s prisons.

“CALL TO ACTION!” Watkins posted on X, formerly known as Twitter. The FBOP “plans to put me in a mens prison! I am currently being held in a mens jail.” She added the handles of Greene, Gaetz, and Jordan as well as a screenshot with their offices’ phone numbers.

Watkins, who is from Ohio, is represented in Congress by Jordan, who has been opposed to transgender rights since at least 2016, when he released a statement opposing then-President Barack Obama’s guidance to allow trans students to use school restrooms in accordance with their gender identities.

“This type of blanket federal policy may tie the hands of those very parents, teachers, school administrators, and local school boards who want to protect kids against dangerous situations that could arise from mixed-gender restrooms and locker rooms in schools,” he said at the time.

Greene has defended the accused January 6 Insurrectionists and condemned the conditions they’re being held in. Her advocacy on prison conditions has only been about the MAGA rioters.

So she would seem like a logical person for Watkins to turn to, except that Greene has also made opposing LGBTQ+ equality one of the centerpieces of her tenure in Congress, even introducing a bill that would ban gender-affirming care for trans youth and make it harder for adults to obtain by banning any federal money from being spent on supporting gender-affirming care. Greene has attempted to add anti-transgender provisions to numerous budgetary bills to prevent federal agencies from even posting about LGBTQ+ rights on social media. She has demonized transgender women as threats to cisgender women and believes cis women have a right to not share gender-segregated spaces like restrooms with trans women.

And in 2021, Greene said that women’s shelters and prisons shouldn’t allow “trans men, biological men who identify as women” in.

Gaetz has been supportive of Greene’s attempts to downplay the January 6 Insurrection, but he has also referred to LGBTQ+ people as “degenerate.”

This past May, federal Judge Amit Mehta sentenced Watkins, a member of the far-right militia Oath Keepers, to eight and half years in prison for her role in the violent attempt to overturn the 2020 election results that resulted in five deaths.

“I was just another idiot running around the hallway,” Watkins said before sentencing. “But idiots are responsible, and today you are going to hold this idiot responsible.”

But that is not how prosecutors saw her role in the attacks.

The Oath Keepers, to whom Watkins was a dues-paying member, is “based on a set of baseless conspiracy theories about the federal government working to destroy the liberties of Americans,” according to the Southern Poverty Law Center. Prosecutors believe that the 11 Oath Keepers who participated in the insurrection were more serious in their attempt to overthrow the government.

Shortly after the November 2020 elections that Donald Trump lost and President Joe Biden won, Watkins texted invitations to training for people she called “recruits,” saying, “I need you fighting fit by innaugeration [sic].”

In December 2020, Watkins texted another member of the group: “We plan on going to DC on the 6th” and used the messaging app Signal to assign roles to a small group on January 2, 2021. This was while Oath Keeper leader Stewart Rhodes and the Oath Keepers were stocking up on thousands of dollars worth of weapons and gear in preparation for the attack and promising their members a “bloody, massively bloody revolution.”

On January 3, Watkins allegedly told another member of the group that “weapons are ok now as well. Sorry for the confusion.” She also told that person to wear khaki or tan pants.

On the day of the insurrection, Watkins allegedly was part of the group of Oath Keepers going to the Senate – where Mike Pence was ceremonially presiding over that chamber as it received the results of the election from the states – and prosecutors said that others in the group called her “captain” and “cap.”

“Y’all, we’re one block away from the Capitol right now. I’m probably gonna go silent when we get there, because I’m gonna be a little busy,” she allegedly said in a channel on the walkie-talkie app Zello.

She and her group forced their way through the doors of the Capitol. Despite her worry that she would “go silent,” she kept talking on Zello, saying where she was in the Capitol.

“Get it, Jess. Do your f**king thing. This is what we f**king [unintelligible] up for. Everything we f**king trained for,” someone responded to her.

She and her group made their way to the Senate. Watkins told people in the crowd around her to “Push, push, push” and “Get in there, get in there” as the mob tried to get past a line of law enforcement officers.

“They can’t hold us!” Watkins said.

Officers then used a chemical spray on the mob, and they retreated. Watkins and her fellow Oath Keepers left the Capitol.

“Yeah. We stormed the Capitol today,” she wrote on Parler that day. “Teargassed, the whole 9. Pushed our way into the Rotunda. Made it into the Senate even. The news is lying (even Fox) about the Historical Events we created today.”

Several days later, Watkins messaged someone on Facebook: “We’ve been organizing a bugout plan if the usurper is installed… Something like 20+ Oathkeepers going to Kentucky mountains on hundreds of acres apparently.”

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