Freed Jan. 6ers: We’ll Be At Your Doors to Make You Vote Republican
Newly freed Jan. 6 convicts are storming Washington. Not with baseball bats, flag poles and stolen riot shields—but with a thirst to wield influence.
Some of the rioters who fought “like hell” for President Donald Trump on Jan. 6, 2021, and were freed by him this week, want to join his administration. Others are talking about running for elected office, or working on campaigns.
Regardless, they want to keep the MAGA movement going, full steam ahead.
“Obviously, President Trump can’t be re-elected in 2028, unfortunately, but anybody who’s a standard bearer that holds, I guess, the new conservative movement I’m going to be supporting, I’m going to be knocking on doors for them,” Enrique Tarrio, leader of the far-right organization Proud Boys, told Matt Gaetz on his OAN show on Thursday.
Tarrio was one of over 1,500 people involved in the Jan. 6 Capitol riot pardoned by Trump as one of his first actions in office on Tuesday. The rest included other members of the Proud Boys and the Oath Keepers, far-right groups who prosecutors said played leading roles in planning the breach on the Capitol when Trump supporters stormed the building in an effort to block the certification of the election.
Sources told the Daily Beast that John Strand, a former underwear model who was found guilty on felony charges of obstruction and misdemeanor charges for entering the Capitol alongside a prominent anti-vaccine doctor, is considering a run for office.
Strand was released from prison early after serving about a year, he told local media in Florida. Asked for comment about his potential political endeavors, Strand replied, “The Daily Beast is a disgrace to journalism and to America.”
Strand isn’t the first individual charged with a Jan. 6-related crime to run for office.
Derrick Evans, a former member of the West Virginia House of Delegates who pleaded guilty to a felony civil disorder charge and received a pardon, unsuccessfully launched a primary bid against GOP Rep. Carol Miller (R-WV) last cycle.
Jeremy Michael Brown, a Green Beret veteran tied to the Oath Keepers, campaigned for a seat in Florida’s state house in 2022 from jail awaiting trial for trespassing and disorderly conduct from the Capitol riot. Brown was eventually found guilty on unrelated weapons charges in his home state of Florida in 2023, and was sentenced to seven years in prison, the Tampa Bay Times reported.
Trump’s pardoning of Jan. 6 defendants sparked mixed reactions from Republicans on Capitol Hill, drawing criticism from prominent Republicans including Sen. Susan Collins of Maine. “I do not support pardons given to people who engaged in violence on January 6, including assaulting police officers, or breaking windows to get into the Capitol, for example,” Collins said shortly after the announcement.
It also drew rare criticism from the Fraternal Order of Police, who endorsed the president in the 2024 campaign. The police union slammed the decision extending clemency to defendants convicted of crimes against police officers responding to the attack.
Some lawmakers, including those who worked with the Jan. 6 Select Committee, are now anxious about a possible movement to rewrite history.
“The Oath Keepers already have influence in Washington because they were pardoned by the person who was responsible for it, Donald Trump, and that pardon suggested he feels that he’s responsible for what happened on Jan. 6. So they already have massive influence because they align with white nationalism, authoritarianism and violence,” former Rep. Denver Riggleman, who served as a senior adviser on the Jan. 6 Select Committee, told the Daily Beast.
Oath Keepers leader Stewart Rhodes, whose 18-year prison sentence was commuted, took to Capitol Hill on Wednesday to meet with lawmakers to advocate for the release of Brown.
“I didn’t enter the Capitol. I didn’t strike a police officer. None of my guys did either. We were railroaded for political purposes because of who we were,” Rhodes told The Wall Street Journal on Thursday.
The 59-year-old Army veteran also insisted his organization had no involvement in planning the attack. “They blundered in along with everybody else. It doesn’t make them criminals, it just makes them kind of stupid,” he added.
Rhodes said he would be interested in working in the Trump administration—either for Elon Musk’s Department of Government Efficiency, or for unconfirmed nominees Tulsi Gabbard and Kash Patel.
Other former Jan. 6 prisoners have indicated they might be looking for work outside of elected office. Tarrio told Gaetz Thursday that he is open to a job in the administration if it was offered, and that he would remain involved in local politics while figuring out his next steps.
Tarrio is also bullish on the prospects of the Proud Boys, who he claims he is still in charge of. “We are gaining,” Tarrio told The Journal on Thursday. “The club is in a way more unified place than it was before.”
Tarrio also said he plans to advocate for the Proud Boys members who had their sentences commuted, but were not fully pardoned.
Riggleman, who investigated Tarrio and other extremists as part of his work on the bipartisan Jan. 6 select committee, told the Daily Beast he fully expects a political uprising—and rewriting of history—from the freed insurrectionists.
“I think what they’re going to do is actually try to influence politics from the inside rather than the outside,” Riggleman told the Beast. “So what I think they’re going to do is run for office, try to get appointments in the Trump administration, try to get jobs on the Hill as congressional staffers, lobby about January 6, try to change the actual narrative on January 6, and change the facts, present a new story, and then try to become mainstream.”