A florist (and former mayoral candidate) pre-paid a vacation weekend in Mexico for herself and the staff of her business in Midland, Texas. That was before the January 6 riot on Capitol Hill during which she filmed herself for social media. Now she is asking permission from a judge to go on that weekend trip.

Jenny Cudd has been charged with two misdemeanor offenses and is on pretrial release. She doesn’t just want to continue on with her plans to take her staff for a bonding-oriented retreat, she booked the retreat in Riviera Maya, Mexico. She wants permission to leave the country. She, her staff, and their spouses are scheduled for a long weekend in Mexico from February 18 through February 21. Cudd doesn’t want to lose the money she has already spent on the arrangements. Her attorneys in Virginia filed a Motion to Travel on February 1.

She is out on a personal recognizance bond. The conditions of her release include that she “check in with pretrial services and “stay away” from Washington except for court hearings and meetings with her attorneys.” The motion was filed because the retreat is a work-related trip.

The postings on Cudd’s social media accounts show a woman proud to have participated in the Trump rally before the march to Capitol Hill and then the riot that took place. She refers to herself and other “patriots”, as she describes them, in the third tense – “we”. “We just pushed and pushed”, for example, when she spoke about how the crowd stormed the building. She also refers to herself singularly when she speaks of how proud of herself she is.

According to the FBI, Cudd described being part of a crowd that forced its way into the building on Facebook Live. The criminal complaint included a quotation from a recorded statement in which it said Cudd declared, “I f—ing charged the Capitol today” and “Hell yes, I am proud of my actions.”

“We just pushed, pushed, and pushed, and yelled ‘go’ and yelled ‘charge.’ We just pushed and pushed, and we got it,” Cudd said, according to the complaint. She is alleged to have said later, “We did break down Nancy Pelosi’s office door.”

Cudd’s use of the word “we” is important because now she is walking back some of her past bravadoes. In an interview with a local television station just two days after the riot, she says she used the word “we” when she really meant the other patriots, not necessarily herself. In other words, once the seriousness of the criminal actions of the day began to set it, she started separating herself from the rest of them. Don’t misunderstand – she’s still quite proud of herself and says she’d do it again but she clearly has been given legal counsel to tamp down her remarks.

Cudd told KWES that even though she used the word “we” in her Facebook Live post, she did not mean to include herself and that she was using “we” generally. Cudd told KWES that she did not break any laws.

“Those things did happen by other people, but I was not a part of that,” Cudd said. “I said in reference to it that ‘we the patriots stormed the Capitol,’ and some people went into different offices and different things like that.”

There is a selfie posted of her in the Capitol Rotunda wearing a Trump flag as a cape. She doesn’t deny her presence in the Rotunda. She does now say she didn’t participate in violence, that they were let in with open doors to the Capitol building. There is a video of her January 8 interview. I will note that the audio is not great from the news producer interviewing her.

Cudd focuses on blaming the cancel culture for her business woes now. She has no remorse for her judgment that day or the actions that ensued. You can see photos and the FBI’s summary of her actions that day HERE. She isn’t some newbie without past political experience. She ran for Mayor of Midland in 2019 against two other candidates and received 15% of the vote. She was arrested with Eliel Rosa, a fellow Midlander and an asylee from Brazil. Both are scheduled is a court appearance today. Both were charged with two misdemeanors on January 13 – a class A misdemeanor (entering and remaining on restricted grounds) and a class B misdemeanor (disorderly conduct or violent entry). If convicted on both charges, they face up to a year-and-a-half in prison as well as a $100,000 fine.

There is no word yet, as I write this post, on whether or not the judge will go along with Cudd’s desire to take a vacay to Mexico.