{"id":9317,"date":"2026-08-18T22:06:54","date_gmt":"2026-08-18T22:06:54","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/movinginsiderusa.com\/?p=9317"},"modified":"2026-08-18T22:06:54","modified_gmt":"2026-08-18T22:06:54","slug":"woman-who-planned-to-kill-treasury-secretary-bessent-gets-six-years-in-prison","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/movinginsiderusa.com\/?p=9317","title":{"rendered":"Woman who planned to kill Treasury Secretary Bessent gets six years in prison"},"content":{"rendered":"
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\"\"<\/figure>\n\n
Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent joins President Donald Trump and Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth in April at a White House luncheon for Italian Prime Minister Giorgia Meloni. (Alex Brandon\/AP)<\/figcaption>\n<\/figure>\n

A Massachusetts woman who traveled to D.C. last year and admitted that she planned to kill Scott Bessent, who was about to be confirmed as President Donald Trump\u2019s secretary of the treasury, was sentenced Tuesday to six years in prison.<\/p>

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Federal prosecutors said Riley English hatched a plan \u201cto use a Molotov cocktail to burn a Cabinet member nominee to death in a political assassination,\u201d at a time of rising civil unrest<\/a> in which Trump has faced multiple assassination attempts and other political figures have been killed.<\/p>\n

English, 26, admitted in court documents that she was carrying a folding knife, a lighter and two miniature bottles of vodka, each affixed with a gray cloth that had been soaked with alcohol-based hand sanitizer, when she arrived at the U.S. Capitol on Jan. 27, 2025. She turned herself in before carrying out an attack, about two hours before the Senate confirmed Bessent to the Cabinet post.<\/p>\n

\u201cWhat are you doing here today?\u201d a Capitol Police officer asked.<\/p>\n

\u201cI was going to kill Scott Bessent,\u201d English responded, according to court records filed in connection with her guilty plea in March to charges of unlawful possession of firearms and carrying a knife on Capitol grounds.<\/p>\n

She told law enforcement after her arrest that she had \u201cbeen thinking of this for a while because of Luigi Mangione,\u201d according to court records. Mangione admitted<\/a> in federal court last week that he fatally shot Brian Thompson, then the chief executive of UnitedHealthcare, in an ambush-style attack in 2024 because of Mangione\u2019s travails with the U.S. health care system.<\/p>\n

Federal public defenders argued that English, who is transgender, had experienced mental health challenges stemming from her upbringing in a religious family, substance abuse and the death of her partner in 2023.<\/p>\n

\u201cThe constant news about the current administration\u2019s anti-transgender agenda became a source of fear for Ms. English and another form of rejection,\u201d the public defenders said in a court filing. \u201cNot only did her family not support her identity, but now the country did not either. Her guilt about her significant other\u2019s death also created a misguided mission to somehow help the transgender community.\u201d<\/p>\n

They described her as someone \u201cwho was in desperate need of help, but who had no realistic plans or desires to hurt anyone,\u201d adding that the two 50-milliliter vodka bottles \u201cwould never have had the capability of being ignited.\u201d<\/p>\n

In her interview with police, English said she did not want to hurt the senators who were considering Bessent\u2019s nomination.<\/p>

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\u201cI don\u2019t want to kill the random Democrats and Republicans who are in the Senate voting and talking,\u201d English said. \u201cI just want the evil, the truly head honchos.\u201d She also said during that interview: \u201cI don\u2019t want to hurt people. That\u2019s why I turned myself in.\u201d<\/p>\n

Bessent is one of the few high-ranking Trump administration officials who are openly gay.<\/p>\n

The treasury secretary wrote in a letter to U.S. District Judge Rudolph Contreras, who handed down the sentence, that his young children had been spooked by the incident and \u201crobbed of their innocence.\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cEvery defendant has an excuse,\u201d Bessent wrote. \u201cThe defendant may have mental health issues; the defendant\u2019s plan may have been ill-conceived and unlikely to work; the defendant may have surrendered to authorities at the last moment. But far more relevant is the defendant\u2019s goal of murdering a cabinet official and the grave harm of the defendant\u2019s conduct to our social compact.\u201d<\/p>\n

English has been in custody since her arrest about 20 months ago. Her legal team requested a sentence of time served.<\/p>\n

\u201cMs. Riley English pled to the lesser offense to avoid harsher potential penalties if convicted of the original charges in the indictment,\u201d public defender Maria Jacob said. \u201cI do think the sentence was excessive in light of the fact that she turned herself in and the significant mitigating circumstances present.\u201d<\/p>\n

In a court filing, U.S. Attorney Jeanine Pirro\u2019s office recapped a list of assassinations and attempts to use violence for political ends in recent years. There have been three attempts on Trump\u2019s life since the 2024 presidential campaign, according to the Justice Department. Pirro asked the judge to send English to prison for a decade.<\/p>\n

\u201cIf you come to our nation\u2019s capital intending to harm a public official because of political dissent, we will find you, arrest you, prosecute you, and send you to prison,\u201d Pirro said in a statement posted on X.<\/p>

Read more Jill Stein, repeat Green Party candidate, faces assault charges in Missouri<\/a><\/p>","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Riley English of Massachusetts turned herself in after arriving at the Capitol with miniature molotov cocktails just before Scott Bessent\u2019s Senate confirmation.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":9315,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-9317","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-interesting"],"yoast_head":"\nWoman who planned to kill Treasury Secretary Bessent gets six years in prison - Moving Insider USA<\/title>\n<meta name=\"robots\" content=\"index, follow, max-snippet:-1, max-image-preview:large, max-video-preview:-1\" \/>\n<link rel=\"canonical\" href=\"https:\/\/movinginsiderusa.com\/?p=9317\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:locale\" content=\"en_US\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:type\" content=\"article\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:title\" content=\"Woman who planned to kill Treasury Secretary Bessent gets six years in prison - 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