California Democrat in Tight House Race Says He 'Personally Prosecuted' Jan. 6 Rioters and 'Held Accountable the Insurrectionists.' Evidence Is Scant.
Democratic congressional candidate Will Rollins (Calif.) repeatedly claims that he "personally prosecuted" participants in the Jan. 6, 2021, Capitol riot, but an exhaustive Washington Free Beacon search only found one case connected to the former assistant U.S. attorney—and it's still pending.
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Democratic congressional candidate Will Rollins (Calif.) repeatedly claims that he "personally prosecuted" participants in the Jan. 6, 2021, Capitol riot, but an exhaustive Washington Free Beacon search only found one case connected to the former assistant U.S. attorney—and it's still pending.
Rollins, of Palm Springs, said part of his role with the Department of Justice's Terrorism and Export Crimes Section within the National Security Division involved prosecuting Jan. 6 rioters from Southern California. That's been a central talking point in his second campaign against incumbent Republican Ken Calvert, 71, who has represented the Inland Empire district since 1993.
"Having personally prosecuted January 6th insurrectionists, Will has unique insight into how these charges will affect the 2024 election up and down the ballot," Rollins's campaign website said in an August 2023 statement after former president Donald Trump was indicted for allegedly attempting to overturn the 2020 election.
In an X post earlier this month, Rollins, 39, said that "as a federal prosecutor I held accountable the insurrectionists who assaulted cops at the Capitol on January 6th." He favorably contrasted his record fighting terrorism with Calvert's decades in office.
But since beginning his rematch against Calvert, Rollins has only specifically been able to cite one case he prosecuted, that of a colorful woman known as "the Beverly Hills insurrectionist," whose long running legal drama has become the butt of jokes. Rollins is listed in court documents as a prosecutor in the case of Beverly Hills cosmetologist Gina Bisignano, the rioter who notoriously referred to the 45th president as "Trumpy Bear." Bisignano, who according to Rolling Stone "became famous for participating in the Capitol riot clad in a Louis Vuitton sweater and Chanel boots," cried out, "You are not going to take away our Trumpy Bear!" as she attempted to enter the Capitol building.
Rollins is named in court documents as an assistant U.S. attorney assigned to Bisignano's case, and he was quoted in numerous news stories as the prosecutor. The Free Beacon quickly and easily established that connection, independent of Rollins's own promotion.
On his campaign website, Rollins claims that Bisignano "was accused of encouraging rioters to break a window and then storming inside the Capitol thereafter." But of the 749 federal defendants who were sentenced as of January, Bisignano is still not among them.
Bisignano's peculiar saga is the only Jan. 6 case that the Free Beacon could connect to Rollins after scouring dozens of court documents and repeatedly searching federal court records and comprehensive news archives. It's possible Rollins was involved in ways that kept his name off cases, such as writing search warrants and applying for digital surveillance, but there is no evidence he played a meaningful role in the prosecution of any Jan. 6 rioters other than Bisignano.
The Rollins campaign declined to comment after repeated requests from the Free Beacon seeking clarification on the breadth of Rollins's role in Jan. 6 prosecutions. Specifically, the campaign declined to comment on whether Rollins was involved in other cases besides Bisignano's and whether the candidate had any role in other cases that would have left his name off public documents.
When he typically touts his record, Rollins says he "helped prosecute insurrectionists." In addition to his campaign website indicating he personally prosecuted multiple participants, and Rollins repeatedly saying so on X, his campaign manager has also said as much. Campaign manager Coby Eiss, in response to a Free Beacon request for comment regarding a July 19 story on Rollins's inflammatory rhetoric against Republicans, defended Rollins's record of "prosecuting insurrectionists," mentioning Jan. 6 unprompted.
"Will is proud of his record standing up for our democracy—whether by protecting a former president or prosecuting insurrectionists who attacked the Capitol, leading to the deaths of police officers," Eiss told the Free Beacon in a statement.
Bisignano, a Beverly Hills salon owner, was arrested in California less than two weeks after the Jan. 6 riot and charged with six misdemeanors and two felonies. She took a plea deal in March 2023 in which she pleaded guilty to four misdemeanors and two felonies and agreed to cooperate with DOJ investigators who would provide her special considerations at sentencing.
Bisignano, however, violated her pre-trial terms by participating in a vigil near where other Jan. 6 rioters were held in jail and sharing intimate details of her ongoing trial. The cosmetologist was subsequently put on house arrest and withdrew her guilty plea for felony obstruction of an official proceeding.
Ultimately, Bisignano pleaded guilty to five charges. Prosecutors in July filed a motion to drop her "Obstruction of an Official Proceeding" charge after reevaluating the impact of the Supreme Court's ruling in Fischer v. United States, which deemed that Jan. 6 obstruction charges were overly prosecuted. Only Bisignano's "Destruction of Government Property and Aiding and Abetting" trial remains unresolved, based on reports and the grand jury's indictment.
"We need gas masks … we need weapons," Bisignano yelled shortly before another rioter began striking a police officer with a baseball bat, court documents describe.
Rollins's race against Calvert is one of the most hotly contested congressional contests in the 2024 election. Rollins narrowly lost his 2022 bid against Calvert by less than 5 points, but he was named one of the top overperformers in the country, Politico reported. Recent redistricting changes to California's 41st district have made the race even more competitive. The changes swapped heavily Republican areas for parts of the Coachella Valley that include overwhelmingly liberal Palm Springs, which has one of the largest gay populations in the country. Rollins, who is openly gay, has made gay rights a focus of his campaign.
National security has been the other beacon of his campaign. "I became a national security and terrorism prosecutor because of 9-11. I wanted to help keep America safe," he writes on his campaign website, adding elsewhere that he considered joining the military but did not because he worried he would be discriminated against for being gay. The California Democrat wrote a July 16 Orange County Register op-ed, headlined "Will Rollins: we cannot allow violence to define America's next chapter," that called for national unity following the assassination attempt on Trump and urged Americans to practice "loving your neighbor."
"The path back to our collective humanity lies in one direction—forward, as one country—and we cannot allow this violence to define America's next chapter," Rollins wrote.
The former federal prosecutor, however, has repeatedly railed against the GOP, saying party leaders plan to "tear down our democracy," the Free Beacon reported.
"One of us wants to protect our democracy, the other is okay watching extremists burn it down," Rollins wrote June 30 in response to reports that Calvert wanted to drop charges against some Jan. 6 rioters. "The choice is clear."
On his campaign website, meanwhile, Rollins wrote that "politics are too often dominated by extremism," with "fringe politicians" bent on getting the most clicks. He said that situation has led to violent acts such as mass shootings and "targeted acts of hate."
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