When this reporter got on a Zoom call with Cristy Tass he was struck by both her kindness and her sincerity.

She believes wholeheartedly that the 2020 election was stolen from Donald J. Trump. That's why she boarded a bus with a group of like-minded Iowans last week and traveled to Washington.

She describes her fellow activists who made the long Washington sojourn as "patriots." She was more than a little disappointed by the marauders who stormed the Capitol following the President's speech to his supporters.

"Under no circumstance should anyone be damaging property, hurting other people," she said earnestly. "That is just unacceptable and they should be charged at the full extent of the law."

Still, Tass does not believe the people who attacked the Capitol are true supporters of the President she hopes to keep in office. She even speculates they were as she put it, "paid protesters." She maintains the crowd that surrounded her as she listened to the President's fiery speech was filled with friendly, cheerful patriots. She surely doesn't believe her President is responsible for what happened after he spoke.

"I'm going to guess you were not one of the people who stormed the Capitol?" I asked Cristy.

"No," she said with a smile. "I was hoping that instead of all the attention going to the hundred or so people who stormed the Capitol, that was not the average Trump supporter doing such. We were just there to stand up for America and for freedom of speech and for honest elections."

The Supreme Court with a conservative majority and three Trump appointees this week rejected efforts by President Trump to get the court to quickly consider challenges to President-elect Joe Biden’s victory in the November election, effectively shutting the door on the president’s last-ditch legal strategy to overturn his defeat.