Woman sentenced to six years in jail over firebomb plot to kill US treasury secretary
Riley English told police she was influenced by Luigi Mangione, the man who was charged with fatally shooting the CEO of UnitedHealthcare.
A woman who told police she travelled to the US Capitol with homemade firebombs intending to kill US treasury secretary Scott Bessent has been sentenced to six years and one month in prison.
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Riley English, 26, of South Deerfield, Massachusetts, was also sentenced to three years of supervised release on Tuesday.
English, a transgender woman, told a US district judge that she had been experiencing a mental health crisis and struggling with substance abuse when she drove to Washington in January 2025.
“I never wanted to hurt anyone,” English told Judge Rudolph Contreras.
“I’m not a political person. I’m not a violent person.”
English arrived in Washington on 27 January, the day of Bessent’s Senate confirmation proceedings, where prosecutors said she told Capitol police that she had come to kill the treasury secretary.
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According to prosecutors, English said she had been influenced by Luigi Mangione, who was charged in the fatal shooting of UnitedHealthcare chief executive Brian Thompson.
She told officers she was “on a mission” and had been thinking about the plan for some time because of Mangione.
English also told police that she was terminally ill and “wanted to do something before I go”, prosecutors said.
Investigators said English initially intended to target other Republican political figures, including Defence Secretary Pete Hegseth and House Speaker Mike Johnson.
She also allegedly planned to burn down the Heritage Foundation, a conservative think tank.
Police said English changed her focus to Bessent after reading an online post about his confirmation hearing.
Investigators found a folding knife, two homemade firebombs and a lighter in her possession at the Capitol.
No one was injured, and Contreras said English’s plan had an “exceedingly low or nonexistent” chance of success.
Bessent was not at the Capitol when English arrived, and the Molotov cocktails she carried appeared to be incapable of igniting, the judge noted.
Assistant US attorney Brendan Horan described the case as an “attempted political assassination”, arguing that English had been planning the attack for at least a month at a time when politically motivated violence was already a growing concern in the US.
“This was not a chance encounter or an impulsive act,” Horan said.
English’s defence attorney, Maria Jacob, argued that her client had been “terrified and traumatised” by fears about the treatment of transgender people under the second Trump administration.
“Our argument is that she was in a diminished mental state,” Jacob said.
Jacob also described English’s actions as “a cry for help”.
Contreras acknowledged English’s difficult circumstances and her mental state at the time of the incident.
“You’ve had a very difficult life,” the judge told her.
“Hopefully, the progress you’ve made in jail to this date has set you on the right path.”
Englis will receive credit for the nearly 20 months she has already spent in custody.