A doctor who gained public attention after promoting the unproven drug hydroxychloroquine as a cure for COVID-19 in a 2020 video retweeted by former President Trump was sentenced Thursday to two months in prison for her involvement in the Jan. 6, 2021, attack on the U.S. Capitol.
Simone Gold, the founder of anti-COVID-19 restriction group America’s Frontline Doctors, pleaded guilty in March to entering and remaining in a restricted building or grounds when she stormed the Capitol last year.
Gold will pay a $9,500 fine, the largest amount of money ordered to be paid by any of the 200 Jan. 6 rioters already sentenced, in addition to serving 60 days in prison, CNN reported.
“It ain’t about free speech,” said District Judge Christopher Cooper in Gold’s sentencing hearing. “January 6 was about a lot of things, but it wasn’t about free speech or COVID vaccinations. … The only reason you are here is where and when and how you chose to express your views.”
America’s Frontline Doctors has characterized Gold’s trial and sentencing as “political persecution” and raised over $400,000 to support the prison-bound doctor, which Cooper called a “disservice to the true victims that day,” according to CNN.
Gold stormed the Capitol alongside other rioters and spoke to them through a megaphone once inside.
The day before, Gold made a speech at a “Stop the Steal” rally, where CNN reports she said: “If you don’t want to take an experimental biological agent deceptively named a vaccine, you must not allow yourself to be coerced!”
According to American Frontline Doctors, Gold “did not participate in any incident that involved violence or vandalism and has categorically rebuked any such activity.”
The group does not consider itself anti-vaccine, but has concerns about COVID-19 vaccines because of a perceived lack of “study” and “transparency.”