Brandon Fellows, 30, spent several years in jail on charges linked to the January 6 Capitol insurrection. He was gun shopping online when WIRED reached him by phone on Thursday.
Fellows is a felon, and under federal law he is prohibited from owning firearms. But he’s so confident that Donald Trump, after winning the 2024 election, will make good on his promises to pardon January 6 rioters that he’s considering purchasing anyways.
“I just wanna piss people off and get some guns,” said Fellows, who smoked a joint while propping his feet up on Senator Jeff Merkley’s desk while wearing a fake beard during the riot. “I want to get a couple: a rifle, a pistol.”
On the campaign trial, Trump repeatedly promised that, if elected, he’d grant pardons and clemency to the January 6 rioters. He yoked his own litany of legal woes, including those linked to January 6 and the prosecution of Capitol rioters, who he characterized as “hostages” and “political prisoners” of President Joe Biden’s administration. More than 1,400 people have been arrested in connection with January 6, with hundreds sentenced to time behind bars. Many of those, some of whom are serving or facing 10- to 20-year prison sentences, saw a potential Trump victory as their only realistic shot at freedom or a clean slate.
“We have brothers suffering today who are still locked in cells, despite yesterday’s victory,” the Proud Boys wrote on their Telegram channel, which was reposted by the channel for the group’s leader, Enrique Tarrio, who is serving a 22-year sentence for seditious conspiracy for the insurrection. “This all means nothing if they’re not free to celebrate it with us. Keep them in your prayers and continue to fight until every J6 prisoner is released from prison and this nightmare is finally over.”
Jake Lang, a January 6 rioter who attacked police with a stolen shield and baseball bat and has spent years in pretrial detention, published a statement on X about Trump’s victory on his social media. Lang, who previously claimed to lead a militia from inside jail, vowed to “forgive” his many enemies, such as “every feckless and spineless member of the GOP”; “every biased member of our DC Jury pools that railroaded us into political prisons”; “every prejudiced mainstream news anchor”; “ impossibly broken and manipulated Federal Judges”; and “every crooked FBI agent that hunted down innocent Americans.”
“Repent for your sins before God and turn from your wicked, ignorant ways—Father will hear from heaven and replenish our Land when the evil repent,” Lang wrote. “There will be no bitterness in my heart as I walk out of these doors in 75 days on inauguration day.”
The atmosphere at “Freedom Corner,” the stretch of pavement outside the DC Jail where January 6 activists have gathered every night for three years for a “vigil,” was jubilant on Wednesday evening. Fellows was in attendance and said that they were popping bottles of champagne. And, as they do every night, leaders of the vigil took calls from January 6-ers from prisons and jails around the country.
Rioter Dominic Box, calling from inside the DC jail, said he hadn’t slept because he’s been so excited. “I am wired. I am electric. I feel vindicated,” said Box, who was convicted of two counts of civil disorder. He suggested that the makeup of the results somehow proved that fraud was committed in the 2020 election.
“Maybe, just maybe, some of those votes in 2020 never existed and were fraudulent, and everyone who showed up on J6 were vindicated for saying there was something wrong with that 2020 election,” Box said. (Evidence conclusively shows the 2020 election was not stolen.)
Someone in the crowd at Freedom Corner blew a shofar in response to Box (shofars, typically associated with the Jewish faith, have in recent years become a mainstay of Christian nationalist demonstrations and are used as an instrument of “spiritual warfare.”)
“The work begins now,” Box continued. “It doesn’t begin in January when we take office; it doesn’t begin when we get pardoned and walk out of here as free and vindicated men and women. It begins now.”
January 6er advocate Suzzanne Monk, who founded the J6 Pardon Project, attended Wednesday’s vigil in person and spoke to the small crowd there. She said that they trust Trump to fulfill his promise of pardons for the rioters but that they have to keep pressure on him. “We know he’s in communication with members of the J6 community,” Monk claimed. “His legal team is in communication, so we know, as a team is formed, who is prepared to move this forward and fulfill the promise Trump has made repeatedly to provide pardons and clemency to the January 6ers.”
“When that team is ready, we will be ready and available to provide the strategy and the most comprehensive list of January 6 defendants on the planet,” Monk added.
If Trump does follow through on his promises, there are a few ways that it could play out. When WIRED reached Steven Metcalf, an attorney who represents several high-profile January 6 rioters, including Lang and Proud Boy Dominic Pezzola, he was contemplating what Trump’s victory could mean for his clients.
Metcalf said he was taking Trump’s promises with a grain of salt, “because that’s just what I do. Until I see something, I don’t believe it.”
He had questions too. For example, who would get priority—people who had already done time or people currently in prison. What sort of advice was Trump getting, and who was he getting it from?
“Then you have to think about the party going forwards, and ultimately what their beliefs are regarding assault on police officers and/or destruction of property,” said Metcalfe. “Will they draw a line in the sand, or would it be a blanket pardon?”
Some January 6 defendants are already requesting delays in their criminal proceedings and ramping up appeals. Nayib Hassan, who represents Tarrio, put out a statement saying that he looks forward to “what the future holds, both in terms of the judicial process for our client and the broader political landscape under the new administration.”
Lawyers for Christopher Carnell, who was convicted of felony obstruction and four misdemeanors for the riot, requested to move Friday’s status hearing in his case to December, citing Trump’s clemency promises. (This motion was denied.)
Lawyers for Jaimee Avery, who is facing misdemeanor charges in connection with the riot, have also requested a delay in criminal proceedings—for different reasons. “It would create a gross disparity for Ms. Avery to spend even a day in jail when the man who played a pivotal role in organizing and instigating the events of January 6 will now never face consequences for his role in it,” they wrote.
Fellows, for his part, feels particularly confident because he was convicted of nonviolent crimes, including obstruction of justice, which the Supreme Court ruled earlier this year had been applied in an overly broad fashion with regards to the January 6 cases. “It will be cool to walk around being like, hey, I’m pardoned by the president.”
He told WIRED he’d been sitting by his window in his apartment in DC and gloating to passersby about Trump’s victory. “I’ve been getting some dirty looks,” he says.
“HEY, DONALD TRUMP WON. WE DID IT. HEY, WE DID IT GUYS. UP HERE!” Fellows shouted, cackling. “THEIR BODY, OUR CHOICE, AMIRITE?”
