Inset: Dova Alina Winegeart (U.S. Attorney’s Office). Background: Winegeart hitting a window at the U.S. Capitol on January 6, 2021 (U.S. Attorney’s Office).
An Oklahoma woman caught on camera cracking a window near a door marked “House of Representatives” at the U.S. Capitol building with a metal-tipped long wooden pole during the Jan. 6, 2021 riots turned in to the feds by her friends and who later threatened law enforcement, witnesses and even her husband for talking to the FBI is going to prison.
Dova Alina Winegeart, 51, was sentenced Monday to four months in prison followed by a year on supervised release and fined $1,000, court records show. Winegeart was found guilty in July of attempted destruction of government property after a one-day bench trial before Judge Carl J. Nichols, a Donald Trump appointee. She was found not guilty of three other counts, including trespassing, disorderly conduct and engaging in physical violence in a restricted building.
Prosecutors said like many other Jan. 6 defendants, Winegeart went to the Capitol that day believing Trump’s lies about a stolen 2020 election.
She attended Trump’s “Stop the Steal” rally, then posted on TikTok a montage with an overlay saying, “Hold on, Sir, We The People are on our way,” showing her wearing a Proud Boys shirt on the way to the Capitol.
On Capitol grounds, she looked through the window near the East Front House Chamber Doors and aggressively banged on the windowpane with her fists. At one point, Winegeart raised her middle finger and yelled, “F— YOU!” at officers inside.
She then grabbed a wooden pole with metal eyebolts at the top and middle, turned to the crowd behind her, held up the wooden pole, and addressed the crowd. It’s not clear what she said, as the surveillance footage does not record audio. But afterward, she faced the door and swung the wooden pole at the window pane. As she struck the door, shards of material littered the ground. A second strike against the window broke the pole.
Before she could attack the door again, her husband rushed toward her and tried to pull her back, eventually leading her away from the door.
Later, she engaged in an hourlong harangue against officers, even repeatedly offering to pay a full year of the officers’ bills if they abandoned their posts defending the Capitol, officials said.
“Don’t be corrupt!” Winegeart told the officers and encouraged them to “walk away.”
“I wanted to storm the Capitol, so bad. That’s why I came here,” Winegeart told a rioter at one point, and then she left the Capitol grounds.
She was arrested after two of her friends sent FBI agents photos showing her on Capitol grounds that day. She wore a long, bright red peacoat with black buttons, a white hat, one black glove, and dark-rimmed glasses. In another photo, she appeared to be swinging a long wooden pole with pointed metal attachments at the window of a door marked as “House of Representatives,” according to a statement of facts.
Agents corroborated the photos the tipsters sent with ubiquitous U.S. Capitol Police Closed Circuit Television (CCTV) video footage that caught many angles of the chaos that day. A camera recording “House of Representatives door footage” showed the same blond woman in the long red peacoat, white hat, and black gloves swinging a long wooden pole there.
In October 2021, a third friend of Winegeart’s shared with FBI agents typo-laden text messages the defendant sent her.
“Had to stay in hotel after storm of capital. It got crazy. I did s—,” she wrote in one, court documents said.
“No I didn’t go inside couldn’t break open alone. Moved onto balcony with cops after. Pieces of s—.”
“I’m good. I’m sore. I’m exhausted. I feel horrible. But I’ll keep fighting. Nothing to loose.”
In an interview with Winegeart’s husband in November at the couple’s Fairview, Oklahoma, home, he admitted he and his wife went to the Capitol on Jan. 6.
Winegeart later threatened investigators, prosecutors, people who cooperated with the FBI, and even her husband.
After he spoke with the FBI, she blamed her actions on him and repeatedly identified him as the “enemy.” She threatened to tell authorities he encouraged her to “break down the door” and that he was “guilty too.”
“F— with me & ill f— you too,” Winegeart threatened.
In their sentencing memo asking for 12 months of incarceration, prosecutors said Winegeart was violent that day.
“Her criminal conduct included violently swinging a metal-tipped wooden pole at a glass window in an effort to break the window in the midst of a violent riot and gain access to the Capitol building,” they wrote. “She also displayed aggression towards police officers who were defending the Capitol on that day. Her incessant vitriol against police revealed her intent and purpose in joining the mob on January 6: to stop the Congressional certification of the Electoral College Vote in the 2020 Presidential Election.
Prosecutors say that after her trial, Winegeart threatened a witness.
“Her continued lack of remorse and refusal to accept responsibility for her crimes, as well as her actions in destroying evidence, continued threats to witnesses and those involved in the prosecution of rioters from January 6, and her refusal to fully participate with the probation office following her conviction strongly support a significant sentence of incarceration,” the sentencing memo said.
In Winegeart’s sentencing statement seeking 12 months probation, her attorney, William L. Shipley, said she arrived long after the most serious violence on the East Side of the Capitol had ended and never went to any area around the Capitol other than the southeast corner where she spent approximately an hour. Shipley wrote that while video evidence might seem to suggest the pole she had that day could have been capable of inflicting death or serious bodily injury, “the reality is that the pole broke in half after two strikes against the door in the hands of a rather diminutive woman.”
“Ms. Winegeart’s time at the Capitol was almost entirely spent as a spectator, aside from two very short episodes during the course of that hour,” Shipley wrote. “As was noted by the Court during the trial, what Ms. Winegeart learned about the violence and property destruction that happened that day she learned from watching the news that night in her hotel room.”
