EXCLUSIVE: She Beat Jeanine Pirro in Court Four Times—Now She’s Breaking Her Silence
Sidney Reid speaks out for the first time since three grand juries and a trial jury cleared her of allegations that she assaulted law enforcement.
It’s the phrase you hear when a jury enters—and the slogan of people taking back their power.
When a federal agent started to grab her in July on the streets of Washington, D.C., Sidney Reid said that she didn’t realize the plainclothes officer was from law enforcement.
“Honestly, the first thing I thought of was [Kyle] Rittenhouse during the whole Black Lives Matter thing,” Reid told All Rise News, referring to the civilian who fatally shot two people and wounded a third person five years ago in Kenosha, Wisc.
After two more officers swooped in, and the third threw her against a wall, Reid finally understood that she was being arrested rather than accosted. She did not realize that she was at the beginning of a three-month process, before three grand juries and a trial jury finally would clear her name.
Watch the full interview below on the All Rise News playlist on the ’s .
“We got her now”
Breaking her silence in a candid and exclusive interview with All Rise News, Reid is one of a growing number of people targeted by the Trump administration with criminal cases that grand juries have been throwing out in droves.
Before Trump’s second term, a grand jury returning a “no true bill” was such a rare occurrence that many prosecutors never witnessed it, but that trend has now happened dozens of times in Los Angeles and Washington, D.C.
“I mean, the saying goes, you can indict a ham sandwich,” Reid noted.
In Washington, D.C., several of those cases accused protesters of assaulting, resisting or impeding law enforcement during Donald Trump’s federal takeover of the city. Reid had been out on the streets recording law enforcement, and she remembered an officer telling her: “I get to video you if you’re videoing me.”
Reid perceived the officer as “trying to throw my rights back in my face” in a way that “seemed a little bit childish.”
As she was being arrested, Reid recalled being told that “if I just minded my business, none of this would be happening.” She said that officers threw her against a brick wall, and arresting FBI agent Eugenia Bates scratched her hand in the process.
“I heard one of the agents saying, ‘We got her now,’ or something to that effect,” Reid said.
Commonly charged against Jan. 6 rioters, the federal charge for assaulting, resisting or impeding law enforcement carries a potential eight-year sentence when charged as a felony, but prosecutors failed three times to secure an indictment on this count.
“Our government is really scary when it wants to be”
Rather than abandon the case, prosecutors charged Reid with a misdemeanor, obviating the need for a grand jury. Reid pleaded not guilty and fought the allegations at a trial.
“I was speechless at the fact that the government would try so ruthlessly to come after someone just exercising their rights — and a right that I was exercising to try to speak for people that don’t have voices anymore in this country,” Reid said.
On the road to trial, Reid’s defense team obtained text messages of Agent Bates downplaying her injuries as “boo boos” and denigrating Reid as a “libtard.”
“The text messages didn’t surprise me that much just because of how I was being spoken to while I was in the car with the ICE agents,” Reid said.
On the eve of the trial, prosecutors suddenly discovered surveillance footage outside the D.C. jail where Reid had been protesting. The government previously claimed to have been inoperable. U.S. District Judge Sparkle Sooknanan scolded prosecutors: “Either your agent lied, or DOC lied, or someone was sloppy,” referring to the Department of Corrections, according to WUSA, a local CBS News station. One of her public defenders, Tezira Abe, reportedly told the jury: “You should be livid that the government brought this case.”
Reflecting on that episode, Reid said: “It makes me really sad because I love this country, but our government is really scary when it wants to be. And I think this trial kind of proved that.”
“Waste, fraud and abuse”
Conservative commentators tried to discredit the grand jurors and trial jurors who rejected the government’s case against Reid as a reflection of liberal Washington, D.C., but Reid noted that her panel included multiple lawyers and government workers who followed the evidence.
“If they understood the assignment, and they saw the baselessness of the charges, then I do feel like I was acquitted because I didn’t do anything wrong,” she said.
On the road to trial, Reid avoided protests in order to follow the advice of her public defenders to “stay out of trouble until this is all over,” but she said that she now plans to move out of the “shadows” to defy what she views as the government’s true goal: “intimidation.”
“This only gives me fire to speak louder and stronger,” Reid said.
Former Fox pundit turned U.S. Attorney Jeanine Pirro has been on a humiliating losing streak before D.C. grand juries, and Reid had a recommendation for Trump to trim budgets in his supposed clampdown against waste, fraud, and abuse.
“Cut her,” Reid said, referring to Pirro. “She’s wasting so many resources, so many tax dollars. And this is a great city, but it can use a lot of work. And what she’s doing is kind of just wasting everyone’s time.”
“If there are any serious charges to be brought up against anyone, 100 percent, go for it, but these are minor infractions,” she added. “These are nonviolent things that she’s trying to prosecute, and for what? It’s just to quiet people who don’t feel the same way that she does or Trump does. And I think that’s really ridiculous in our nation’s capital to try and silence democracy.”
Thank you for the more in-depth report on Sydney Reid's case.