Capitol Riot Defendants Remove Ankle Monitors and Disappear Days Before Trial
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A Florida woman accused of taking part in the Jan. 6 Capitol riot is on the lam after tampering with her ankle monitor bracelet and failing to appear at her trial.
An FBI hunt is now underway for Olivia Pollock, who was meant to show up to court Monday to face trial on charges related to the Capitol attacks, including assaulting police officers and interfering with law enforcement. She ultimately “failed to appear,” according to a bench warrant obtained by The Daily Beast. Instead, at court on Monday, Pollock was declared a “fugitive.”
She disappeared Friday with another accused Jan. 6 rioter—Joseph Hutchinson III—after the pair “tampered with or removed the ankle monitors that track their location,” said Joe Boland, a supervisory special agent with the FBI’s Lakeland, Florida office, according to the Associated Press.
Boland told the outlet that the FBI has recovered one of the defendants’ ankle monitors but did not specify who it belonged to. The pair remains on the run.
While many accused Jan. 6 defendants were denied bail, Pollock and Hutchinson were both released from custody one month after their arrests, in June 2021, and ordered to wear GPS monitors.
Pollock last appeared in court on Feb. 22 via Zoom, alongside two others charged in the case, Joshua Doolin and Michael Perkins. Doolin and Perkins were scheduled to face trial on Monday alongside Pollock, but will now receive a bench trial without her.
She will be tried alongside Hutchinson, who is meant to face court in August.
Hutchinson’s last interaction with the court was Feb. 27, when he asked permission to travel to D.C. to attend the trials of the Pollock and her co-defendants. “It stands to reason that there is no good reason that the court should deny me the ability to support my friends and learn court procedure,” Hutchinson wrote in a letter to U.S. Attorney Matthew Graves and seen by The Daily Beast.
Hutchinson is representing himself at trial, though an attorney appointed to assist him as standby counsel declined to comment to the Associated Press on Monday.
Pollock is the sister of another Jan. 6 riot defendant, Jonathan Pollock, who disappeared months ago after a federal arrest warrant was issued for him in June of 2021. He is charged with Assaulting, Resisting, or Impeding Certain Officers or Employees; Aiding and Abetting; Theft of Government Property; Restricted Building or Grounds Without Lawful Authority; and Violent Entry and Disorderly Conduct on Capitol Grounds.
Elita Amato, a laywer for Olivia Pollock, told the Associated Press that her client “had been diligently assisting in her defense for her upcoming trial prior to her disappearance.”
The Daily Beast has contacted the FBI for further comment.
Read more at The Daily Beast.