WASHINGTON — A woman who stormed the Capitol on January 6 wearing a pink beret and was recently identified to the FBI by a former romantic partner was loaded with four federal charges on Monday.
As NBC News first reported, Jennifer Inzunza Vargas Geller, a California woman, appeared in a viral tweet from the FBI late last month, leading to his identification. He now faces four misdemeanor counts: entering or remaining in a restricted building or on restricted grounds; disorderly and disruptive conduct in a restricted building; disorderly conduct on Capitol grounds or buildings; and illegal parades, rallies, or pickets at a Capitol building. She was not in custody Monday, a police source said, but there is now a warrant out for her arrest.
For more than two years, online detectives who identified hundreds of participants in connection with the January 6 attack were unable to determine the identity of Vargas Geller, and the woman they called #PinkBeret had been the subject of conspiracy theories. online. A lawyer for another defendant from January 6 suggested that he was working at the behest of the government.
But last weekend, a clothing designer Vargas Geller used to date was standing in the checkout line at a Joann Fabric and Crafts store when his friend showed him an amusing cheep from the FBI’s Washington Field Office on your phone.
«He’s always on Twitter, and he’s like, ‘Look at this girl,'» the designer told NBC News. «I stopped dead,» he said. “I said, ‘That’s Jenny. ‘”
While the most recent tweets from the FBI’s Washington field office account received a few thousand views, the tweet featuring Vargas Geller racked up millions. Twitter users called it an “Insurrection eva brown”, “fascist matilda”, and compared it with April Ludgate, the character played by Aubrey Plaza on NBC’s «Parks and Recreation.» Several users joked that she looked like something out of a Wes Anderson movie, and one user tweeted «Emily incarcerated,» referencing the «Emily in Paris» show.
The charges against Vargas Geller came 11 days after the viral tweet, which is an extremely fast turnaround compared to other cases on January 6. Online detectives have identified hundreds of additional participants in the Capitol riot who have not yet been charged, some of whom were first identified more than two years ago, in 2021.
Vargas Geller was from Sacramento, the clothing designer told NBC News, but came to meet him in Los Angeles in early 2019, when they were in their early 20s. “We weren’t, like, trying to get married or anything,” she said. «We were dating for a few months.»
But there was a red flag that caused a break: Vargas Geller, he said, wrote on Discord that he was reading Hitler’s 1925 manifesto.
“I was instantly turned off, like, ‘Yo, I don’t think this is going to work,’” he said. «You’re reading ‘Mein Kampf’ and you think immigrants don’t deserve X, Y, Z.» (A social media account linked to Vargas Geller, seen by NBC News, also referenced Hitler.)
NBC News was unable to reach Vargas Geller for comment.
Kira West, the defense attorney for Jan. 6 defendant Darrell Neely, who suggested that «Pink Beret» was working as a government agent, told NBC News after Vargas Geller was identified that the government should have made an effort to identify it before.
“Our question is, why didn’t they look sooner when we brought it to their attention a long time ago? Especially with Mr. Neely’s freedom at stake,” West said.
Vargas Geller’s ex knew that she had traveled to DC and asked her if she was on the «no fly» list in a message he wrote to her a few days after the attack.
«No, because I didn’t enter the [Capitol]she wrote, despite extensive video evidence later seen by NBC News and cited in Monday’s affidavit that the FBI says shows her inside the building.
“But you still crossed state lines to cause a riot,” he replied.
“I was there to support the president. Do not participate in that riot. I support the police,” Vargas Geller responded on January 10, 2021, in a post shared with NBC News.
Federal prosecutors have now charged more than 1,000 people in connection with the attack on the Capitol and hundreds of additional participants who have been identified have yet to be arrested.
Most of the defendants facing charges similar to those of Vargas Geller have received probation or a short sentence of imprisonment. The longest sentence for a January 6 sentence to date, more than 14 years in federal prison, went to a violent rioter with an extensive criminal record.