A Delco man stormed the Capitol, feds say, telling his ex only ‘a moron’ would doubt the election was stolen. She turned him in.
Richard Michetti, of Ridley Park, and Raechel Genco, of Levittown, are the latest Philadelphia-area residents charged in connection with the Jan. 6 insurrection.
A Delaware County man turned in by his ex-girlfriend and a Bucks County woman now facing charges alongside the man she lives with have become the latest Philadelphia-area residents charged in the Jan. 6 Capitol riot.
FBI agents said that Richard Michetti, of Ridley Township, was arguing with his ex over text messages about his presence among the mob of pro-Trump supporters even as he dodged tear gas and rubber bullets to storm the building.
“If you can’t see the election was stolen, you’re a moron,” he wrote in an exchange quoted in court filings made publicly available Wednesday, adding later: “This is tyranny. They … told us ‘We rigged the election and there’s nuthin [sic] you can do about it’ What do you think should be done?”
Photo and video footage show a man prosecutors identified as Michetti — dressed in a hoodie, White Sox baseball cap, and surgical mask — milling about the Capitol Rotunda and, later, checking his phone in a crowd of people that had amassed on the steps outside.
His ex turned the texts and the videos he had sent her over to the FBI the next day.
Meanwhile, prosecutors say Raechel Genco, 38, of Levittown, was also among that crowd.
Investigators say she traveled to Washington with Ryan Samsel, 37, of Bristol, who was charged last month with assaulting officers manning the barricades outside the Capitol steps.
As he led a crowd in pushing and pulling on the barriers and caused one to topple over onto a Capitol police officer who fell, hit her head and suffered a concussion that required hospitalization, Genco hung back, investigators say.
Still, agents said, they later identified her in photos of the crowd milling around in a restricted part of the Capitol grounds.
Samsel had previously told agents when they came to arrest him Jan. 30 at the home where he lives with Genco and her family that she had not illegally passed any barriers, according to charging documents in her case that were unsealed Wednesday.
Those records did not indicate whether Genco had since been taken into custody. She faces one count of illegally entering Capitol grounds, a charge that carries a maximum sentence of up to a year in prison if convicted.
Michetti, who was charged with a similar count, also faces additional counts including obstruction of Congress, which could send him to prison for up to 20 years.
It was not immediately clear whether either of them had retained attorneys.
Samsel, meanwhile, remains in custody pending a hearing in Washington next month. At the time of his arrest, he was on probation for an unrelated assault conviction out of Bucks County and wanted on another assault charge from Burlington County. He faces up to 20 years in prison if convicted of assaulting an officer during the Capitol attack.
Federal prosecutors have charged more than 250 people in connection with the insurrection, including at least 25 from Pennsylvania and 10 from New Jersey.