BUFFALO — A pair of Youngstown women have become the eighth and ninth Western New Yorkers to be criminally charged with entering the U.S. Capitol on Jan. 6, 2021, and attempting to stop the certification of President Joseph Biden’s 2020 election victory.
Wendy Dominski, 55, and Traci Quimby, 54, appeared in U.S. District Court in Buffalo on Thursday and were each charged with counts of disorderly and disruptive conduct in the Capitol grounds or buildings, disorderly and disruptive conduct in a restricted building or grounds, entering and remaining in a restricted building or grounds and parading, demonstrating, or picketing in a Capitol building. All the charges are misdemeanors.
The pair were charged in a sealed criminal complaint filed in the U.S. District Court for the District of Columbia on Tuesday. They were arrested Thursday by FBI Buffalo Field Office Joint Terrorism Task Force (JTTF) agents after the complaint was unsealed.
After their appearance — in shackles — Dominski and Quimby were released from custody. They are scheduled to appear for arraignment before a magistrate judge in Washington, D.C. on Oct. 8.
Attorneys for the women could not immediately be reached for comment on the case.
The criminal complaint includes a sworn 16-page affidavit from a JTTF agent that outlines the case against Dominski and Quimby. The agent said the women were identified by a tip and that his investigation involved the review of video captured by security cameras at the Capitol, body cam video from officers of the District of Columbia Metropolitan Police Department, and “open source video taken by journalists and rioters on Jan. 6 as well as social media posts made by Dominski, Quimby and other rioters.”
The video shows the two women entering the Capitol through doors in the Senate wing of the building. Once inside, the video shows them walking through the Capitol before leaving through a broken window.
The agent said the two women are “friends from Youngstown,” who in the aftermath of the 2020 election became involved in and traveled to protests of the results and decided to attend the Jan. 6 Stop the Steal rally in D.C. The pair reportedly arrived in Washington on Jan. 4 and “attended multiple election-related protests, some of which Dominski livestreamed on her Facebook page.”
The affidavit is filled with screen captures from various video sources that correspond to the JTTF agent’s description of Dominski and Quimby’s activities during the Capitol insurrection.
The agent said the two women ignored a “blaring alarm” while entering the Capitol building. Once inside, the agent said Quimby approached a rioter with a Confederate flag and took a “puff” from either a “marijuana joint or cigarette.”
After spending approximately 11 minutes inside the Capitol, the agent said video evidence shows Dominski climbing up on a Senate wing window, smashed by rioters, standing on the outside ledge and raising her hands over her head “as if in triumph.” He said Dominski then “danced side-to-side” in the window before being followed out by Quimby.
Outside the Capitol, the two women stopped to speak with a journalist who asked them, “How did it go down?”
“Got up to the doors, the door got busted out, the windows got busted out, and we barged into our house. It’s our house,” Dominski said.
Dominski also told the unidentified journalist that she and Quimby had been “smoked” by tear gas fired by Capitol police.
Quimby told the journalist they entered the Capitol because “We told our grandchildren we’re not letting this happen.”