CNN
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A Texas family of five was sentenced together on Wednesday for storming the Capitol on January 6, with the two parents getting jail time and three adult children given probation and some home confinement.
The Munn family from Borger, Texas, was among some of the first to enter the Capitol on January 6, climbing through a broken window and making their way through the crypt and the visitor center before entering a Senate conference room, according to their sentencing memos.
Parents Dawn and Thomas Munn were reprimanded by DC Chief Judge Beryl Howell for bringing four of their eight children – three adults and one minor child – to Washington with the intent to investigate the results of the 2020 election.
Before being sentenced, Dawn Munn said she was in Washington in order to get answers about whether the 2020 election was secure.
“I was looking for somebody to show me proof that our election was going to be secure,” Dawn Munn said. “If we don’t have a secure election, we don’t have a country. This is a country by the voice of the people.”
Howell said that didn’t justify violence.
“There is no question that can justify disrupting the democratic process,” Howell said.
In explaining his reason for traveling to DC, Thomas Munn told the judge he had never been political before but “I just kept watching what was happening on the news, and I felt we should speak out.”
Dawn and Thomas Munn were sentenced to 14 days behind bars. Their adult children, Kayli, Joshua and Kristi, were sentenced to probation and some home confinement.
Before the Capitol attack, Thomas Munn had encouraged others to travel to DC for January 6 through social media posts and, in the wake of the riot, several of the Munns posted on social media that they were at the Capitol that day.
“These were fighting words that only contributed to the misinformation about January 6,” Howell said of some of their posts.
Kristi Munn, the oldest of the eight Munn children, received 90 days of home detention in addition to probation. Howell said that Kristi, as a mother of three, possessed the judgment to realize that she was engaging in criminal activity and could have made her own decision not to enter the Capitol.
“I wish I had slowed down,” Kristi Munn said when addressing the court Wednesday. “I very much want to give a better example for my siblings.”
Joshua Munn had an unnamed physical ailment as a child that left him temporarily paralyzed for an unspecified amount of time. He has been physically disabled since and this was highlighted by Howell, who went on to task Dawn Munn for being a nurse and a mother and still “forcing” her son to march on the Capitol.
Howell emphasized that it was the parent’ responsibility to set a better example for their children.
