Bluesky

Washington, DC—For more than 900 days, right-wing protesters have met at 7 pm on the corner of 18th & E St. SE outside of Washington, DC’s Central Detention Facility. There, they have been calling for the US government to release the incarcerated January 6 defendants held inside the jail. The core members of this group were so dedicated that they uprooted their lives and relocated to DC. And while Monday was cold enough to move the inauguration indoors, it wasn’t cold enough to deter supporters of the J6ers from gathering, just as they have for almost two and a half years at what’s been dubbed Freedom Corner. 

On a typical night at Freedom Corner, protesters turn on electronic noisemakers, creating a constant, whirring background noise; they place defendants’ calls on speakerphone and hold it next to a mic. Calls and speeches from their incarcerated allies range from complaints about the food to discussions about “next time you wanna storm the Capitol” or who “needs to swing from the end of a rope.”

So Monday evening, while others were packed into the Capital One Arena to watch Trump’s inauguration parade or getting ready for one of the many black-tie galas, a small group of us were stationed outside of the jail. This time, instead of congregating at the usual corner, we were directly in front of the main entrance. Corner regulars, Donald Trump supporters who had traveled in for inauguration, and members of the press were all waiting to see if the new president would make good on a campaign promise: to pardon the J6ers on day one.

In the crowd, supporters oscillated between being mad at the press for being there and mad at us for not having been there enough. Sure, a J6er had scrawled “murder the media” on one of the Capitol’s doors, but can’t someone pencil in a Freedom Corner protester for a cable-TV interview?

I was with two other female journalists when two right-wing male livestreamers walked up. “Are these your girlfriends?” one man asked the other, in a gruff intimidation tactic. He quickly switched to throwing out random talking points. “You guys hate America or what? I’m just wondering. Hey, guess what? I just want to let you guys know. Trump won, fuckers.”

He decided he wanted to make sure his online audience could see who we were. “Get their faces real good,” he said. (We weren’t hiding, and one of the three of us was a TV correspondent.) As he shoved his phone into our faces, we each gave our names without prompting. “Now I’ve got all your names!” he announced triumphantly, as though he had figured out a great mystery, wandering away.

But just because one person decides you’re an antifa journalist who should be bullied doesn’t mean everyone does. A few people were happy to have the media witness their revelry. Brandon Fellows, who was sentenced to 37 months in jail for his participation in the Capitol riot (and another five months for his conduct in court), told me his motorcycle had been stolen the night before, but he didn’t care. Nothing mattered except that the pardons were coming—and he had been out celebrating until late the night before.“We were partying, until like, just now,” Fellows had told me around 4:30 am the morning of January 20.

Pro-democracy demonstrators at the jail are kept across the street from the January 6 supporters, but that does not stop them from being heard. When a group of several young neo-Nazis showed up, a protester who goes by Anarchy Princess shouted, “Ryan Sanchez, you’re a Nazi, and you Sieg Heil on women.”

Sanchez—who has been a member of several white-nationalist groups, including Identity Evropa and Rise Above Movement—was followed around by a small posse all night. The group was easily identifiable by their outfits, which look like a cross between school shooter and military cosplay. “Ryan, do your Sieg Heil,” Anarchy Princess taunted him. “Show the cops here that you’re an actual Nazi.”

“Is that illegal?” one of Sanchez’s friends asked rhetorically, at the same time a smirking Sanchez told her, “You gotta earn it.”

Sanchez and his friends seemed welcomed by the Freedom Corner crew; a J6er thanked Sanchez for his continued support of their community. Though away from it was another story: Later that night, at a neighborhood bar a block from the jail, a patron hit one of Sanchez’s friends in the face. “People died in the Holocaust,” a witness told me the assailant explained as he left the bar.

Pardons apply to convicted criminals, and most of the J6ers in the DC jail were still waiting for their trials. Only two, who had been convicted the week before, were given the all clear to leave Monday night. The others would be released, but the courts needed a bit more time to sign off on the release of those in pretrial detention. A representative from the federal government explained the situation to the crowd. He introduced himself as Paul Ingrassia, the new White House liaison to the Justice Department.

Last summer, Ingrassia threatened to sue me when I wrote that he had been standing in front of me for nearly 20 minutes at a rally held by the white nationalist Nick Fuentes. Ingrassia is a lawyer who has helped represent the manosphere star Andrew Tate, who is under investigation for multiple serious sex crimes. Ingrassia has also championed Tate’s beliefs and fawned over Tate on social media. Now, he works for the president.

Ingrassia posted a photo of the two pardoned prisoners late Monday night. “A HISTORIC DAY IN AMERICA! 🇺🇸”