Jenny Cudd, a Texas native who participated in the Jan. 6 attack on Congress, is being given special permission to take a vacation with her husband to Mexico's Riviera Maya from Feb. 18-21, according to court documents obtained by USA Today.
The news outlet reported that a U.S. magistrate signed off on changes to pretrial travel restrictions that will allow Cudd and her husband to take their pre-planned four-day "work-related bonding retreat." Cudd owns Becky's Flowers in Midland, Texas, and planned the vacation for her employees and their spouses.
Her lawyers asked for the change on Monday and got a speedy response. Prosecutors allegedly expressed no issue with the changes.
One of the Capitol insurrection defendants who was granted pretrial release, Jenny Cudd, has asked the court for permission to travel to Riviera Maya, Mexico this month for a prepaid "work related bonding retreat" (she has to get a judge's permission to leave the country) pic.twitter.com/FSlSfxQSOc
— Zoe Tillman (@ZoeTillman) February 1, 2021
Cudd, who has shown no remorse for participating in an attack that resulted in five deaths, has been charged with two federal two misdemeanor offenses: entering a federal building without permission and engaging in disorderly conduct, according to The Washington Post.
Cudd was arrested by the FBI on Jan. 13 after she took to Facebook to explain that she and others around her had stormed the Capitol Building and broke “down Nancy Pelosi’s office door and someone stole her gavel and took a picture sitting in the chair flipping off the camera.”
“I was here today on Jan. 6th when the new revolution started at the Capitol,” she said.
“Fuck yes, I am proud of my actions. I fucking charged the Capitol today with patriots today,” she allegedly said, according to the Daily Beast.
BREAKING: The FBI has arrested Jenny Cudd, reports @CBS7News. She recorded a video inside the Capitol saying they didn’t vandalize anything, then said they did break down @SpeakerPelosi’s door & steal her gavel. Cudd’s a fmr. Midland, TX. mayoral candidatepic.twitter.com/jFUDoMn65V
— David Begnaud (@DavidBegnaud) January 13, 2021
Since her arrest and eventual pre-trial release, Cudd has defended her actions by saying she had no weapons on her when she broke into the halls of Congress.
"I went inside the Capitol completely legally and I did not do anything to hurt anybody or destroy any property," Cudd told NewsWest 9, refuting her own words in a video she shared on her Facebook page.
"So what they're trying to do is cancel me because I stood up for what I believe in and I can tell you this it's – and it's what I've told everybody – I would do it again in a heartbeat," she added.
Cudd previously tried to run for mayor of the town before flying to Washington, D.C., on Jan. 6.
The decision to allow Cudd to take a vacation while on trial astonished many lawyers and activists who noted the thousands of cases where their client did far less yet were not given any allowances.
"We live in a nation where some justify George Floyd’s murder by a police officer’s vicious knee, but Jenny Cudd, who was a part of an insurrection at the nation’s Capitol, was permitted to go on vacation," wrote Bernice King, CEO of the Martin Luther King Jr. Center for Nonviolent Social Change.
We live in a nation where some justify George Floyd’s murder by a police officer’s vicious knee, but Jenny Cudd, who was a part of an insurrection at the nation’s Capitol, was permitted to go on vacation. https://t.co/elFbDOSk55
— Be A King (@BerniceKing) February 3, 2021
As a public defender, I represented a 16yo for whom I had to beg a judge for release (with escorts, in handcuffs) to go to his dad's funeral.
Meanwhile, someone accused of participating in the insurrection may get to go on a bonding retreat in Mexico.
Two. Systems. Of. Justice. https://t.co/rJYTurZD4S
— Eliza Orlins (@elizaorlins) February 1, 2021
As Blavity previously reported, there has been widespread outrage at federal authorities who not only allowed most of the Capitol Building attackers to leave the building and simply go back home but also to be set free on pre-trial release.
One man, who was seen on video carrying weapons and zip-tie handcuffs intending to take members of Congress hostage, was released ahead of his trial.
Another woman, who stole a laptop out of Pelosi's office and was accused of trying to sell it to Russian government agents, has also been released before her trial.
Federal courts have even allowed some of the Capitol Building rioters to get special organic food requests met by jails after asking for approval, shocking many who defend people given no allowances before trial.
The U.S. Attorney’s Office is now facing backlash, and scrutiny from congressional Democrats, after announcing that they may not charge everyone who participated in the attack on Congress.
"More recently, reports have emerged that suggest that the U.S. Attorney’s Office is considering whether to charge a large portion of the rioters who breached the Capitol security perimeter. It is critical that all of the perpetrators of this insurrectionist attack be identified, investigated, arrested, charged and subsequently prosecuted," House Judiciary Committee Chairman Jerrold Nadler wrote in a letter last week to Acting Attorney General Monty Wilkinson.
"The explicit racist and anti-Semitic tone of the attack on the Capitol is deeply disturbing. The insurrectionists peppered African American officers with racist remarks as some officers were engaged in hand-to-hand confrontations. The events of January 6 were an attack on our democracy and, in effect, our entire country," he added.