Освобожден Ян. 6 заключенных рассказывают, как они начинают восстанавливать свою жизнь

Authored by Janice Hisle via The Epoch Times (emphasis ours),

Prosecutors acted with “unrelenting integrity,” Attorney General Merrick Garland said, as the Justice Department pursued cases against 1,583 people for events on Jan. 6, 2021—a date etched into the American psyche with unforgettable images of vandalism and violence at the U.S. Capitol.

Illustration by The Epoch Times

President Donald Trump, who had attracted a massive crowd to Washington that day amid a dispute over his 2020 election loss, decried these cases as “political persecutions.” He tossed out the prosecutions upon his return for a second presidential term on Jan. 20.

Saying he was ending “a grave national injustice that has been perpetrated upon the American people over the last four years,” Trump commuted sentences for 14 serious Jan. 6 offenders and issued full pardons to all remaining defendants—1,569 people, based on federal data.

Trump showed mercy even to those convicted of assaulting officers—a controversial move. He previously stated that only peaceful, nonviolent offenders deserved consideration.

But he justified that decision by pointing out that the convicted Jan. 6 defendants had already been locked up for years, often in “inhumane” conditions. They were targeted for political reasons and were punished more harshly than many people who committed worse offenses, including killings, he said.

A half-dozen of the former Jan. 6 prisoners told The Epoch Times their side. The publication also reviewed Justice Department statements about each interviewee and dozens of other resources for this story.

​The interviewees, ranging from a 25-year-old entrepreneur to a 55-year-old former New York police officer, say much information has been suppressed and distorted.

They, like many Americans, continue to question why security in and around the Capitol was clearly insufficient on Jan. 6.

They also suspect a government setup—and a coverup.

Although officials have rejected such claims, a government watchdog’s recent report reignited questions over the actions of “confidential human sources.” Twenty-six of these informants were present on Jan. 6, the Inspector General’s report said.

Four of the informants entered the Capitol; 13 others entered restricted areas on the grounds—without FBI permission. The FBI didn’t authorize the informants to encourage violence, either. But the report left it unclear whether informants obeyed that order.

Setting the Record Straight

The interviewed Jan. 6 defendants say many Americans still incorrectly believe that police officers were killed in the melee; 140 officers were hurt, none fatally, despite initial reports.

It’s unclear how many civilians were injured, but Trump supporters were the only people who died that day. Police fatally shot Ashli Babbitt, 35, and beat Roseanne Boyland, 34, who was knocked unconscious in a stampede; her cause of death remains in dispute. Investigators cleared officers of wrongdoing in both cases.

(L–R) Pictures of Rosanne Boyland, Ashli Babbitt, and Benjamin Phillips, who died during the Jan. 6, 2021, incident at the U.S. Capitol, are displayed during a “January 6th Solidarity Truth Rally” near the U.S. Capitol on Sept. 24, 2022. Alex Wong/Getty Images

The Jan. 6 interviewees agreed that, as more videos surfaced, the American public has begun to see a wider, clearer picture of the day’s events.

Before violence broke out, many thousands of people listened to Trump’s speech at The Ellipse, a park about 2 miles from the Capitol, where Congress was preparing to certify the 2020 election results.

Trump said the group should march to the Capitol “peacefully and patriotically.” But before his speech ended, protesters—possibly mingled with provocateurs—had already clashed with police at the Capitol.

Videos show some people walking into the building through already-open doors—past police who made no attempt to halt them. Some of those nonviolent people faced criminal trespassing charges.

Others violently tangled with police, smashed windows, and forcibly entered the building. Nearly 200 people pleaded guilty to assaulting officers. Officials set property damage at $1.5 million.

Common Themes Emerge

Several Jan. 6 interviewees say they regretted reacting badly amid the mayhem as police fired munitions and chemicals.

Some people accused police of excessive, unprovoked force. Those accusers include a retired New York police officer. However, a Capitol Police report found all 293 reported uses of force were justified—and a survey found some officers complained they were discouraged from using sufficient force to repel aggressors.

Two of the six interviewees were convicted of assaulting officers—the offense that sparked much criticism of the Trump pardons. Both of those defendants’ alleged assaults were tied to retaliating against police with pepper spray or pushing against barricades.

All six interviewees allege they were subject to constitutional rights violations, harassment, and other maltreatment because of their status as Jan. 6 defendants.

None of those interviewees was convicted of seditious conspiracy; one was acquitted.

They consistently stated that it was preposterous to call them “insurrectionists” and rejected prosecutors’ assertions that they tried to halt the peaceful transfer of power from Trump to President-elect Joe Biden.

At most, the interviewees said they expected Congress to pause the election certification to allow further exploration of election irregularities in a half-dozen states. Some said they didn’t even intend to protest; they just wanted to hear Trump speak and show support for him.

All expressed gratitude to Trump for acting on their behalf.

And all are hopeful that a new congressional probe will “uncover the full truth that is owed to the American people,” as House Speaker Mike Johnson ((R-La.) stated on Jan. 22.

Several Jan. 6 defendants said that now that they have regained their freedom, revealing the truth about Jan. 6 is their most fervent wish.

President Donald Trump at the Save America rally in Washington on Jan. 6, 2021.

Nonviolent 21-Year-Old Labeled a ‘Terrorist’

Alexander Sheppard recalls that, as a schoolboy in Worthington, a historic central Ohio community of 15,000 people, he learned about Americans’ constitutionally guaranteed rights.

But he says being prosecuted for Jan. 6 shattered his “naïve” notions about exercising his rights to free speech and protest.

Just before Jan. 6, Sheppard was a 21-year-old marketing entrepreneur. He made a last-minute decision to make a six-hour drive from Ohio to Washington for Trump’s “Save America” or “Stop the Steal” rally.

He arrived at 6 a.m., early enough to score a close spot at the Ellipse. He stood in a massive crowd, about a half-dozen rows away from the stage, as Trump delivered his speech that afternoon.

“It was an atmosphere of love and patriotism and love for our country,” Sheppard said.

But after marching to the Capitol, he saw officers firing tear gas into the crowd. At times, he and others got “riled up” over police “using unnecessary force on people.”

Amid the chaos, “I made the dumb decision to go inside the building,” he said. “I didn’t think I was breaking any laws. Like I said, I thought we had a First Amendment right to protest.”

Upon entering the Capitol, he and others were mesmerized by its grandeur. He took many videos and pictures that were later used against him.

“If I thought I were committing a crime, I wouldn’t have recorded so much of it,” he said, adding that he remained nonviolent and committed no vandalism.

Fatefully, Sheppard was nearby when Babbitt was shot; he drew his hands to his head in disbelief as she fell to the floor. His proximity to that much-scrutinized event probably made him more high-profile, he said. The officers escorted him and others out of the area.

Nearly two months later, just after Sheppard set foot inside the airport in Columbus, Ohio, for a business trip, about 10 federal agents swooped in.

Alexander Sheppard in Columbus, Ohio, on Jan. 28, 2025. Samira Bouaou/The Epoch Times

He was stunned to be arrested. He was even more shocked to be facing a felony charge of obstructing an official proceeding, plus five misdemeanors for being disorderly and protesting inside the Capitol.

Sheppard was released to await trial. Two years later, in January 2023, jurors convicted him of five charges. His sole acquittal: a misdemeanor for entering a room where he photographed a portrait of America’s first president, George Washington.

A judge sentenced Sheppard to 19 months in prison, half the time prosecutors had sought.

In prison, Sheppard learned he was labeled a “terrorist,” which disqualified him from certain privileges.

He asks, “How could I be labeled a ‘terrorist’ when I was charged with nothing violent?”

Even before the Supreme Court issued its June ruling, a judge agreed with Sheppard’s attorney’s contention that the Fischer case raised a “substantial question” about the validity of his sole felony conviction.

Sheppard’s lawyer claimed “that question will not be decided until after he has served more time in prison than is warranted by his misdemeanor convictions,” a judge wrote in January 2024. “Accordingly, he asks the Court to release him from prison at the end of his likely misdemeanor sentence.”

The judge cut Sheppard’s prison term to six months; he was released in May 2024.

He said he still benefited “in a big way” from Trump’s pardon. It wiped his criminal convictions—but not charges—from his record. And it lifted his post-release requirements, such as obtaining permission to travel outside of southern Ohio, submitting to urinalysis, and reporting to a court official.

Now 25, Sheppard has been doing menial labor but hopes to land a better job; he mourns the loss of his solid reputation and unblemished record.

But he sees public and media perceptions shifting.

“When I was facing more than 20 years in prison, I was a ‘January 6 Insurrectionist.’ Later on, I was referred to as a ‘Capitol Rioter.’ Now that I WON in the Supreme Court, was PARDONED by the President, and will have ALL charges dismissed, I am called a ‘January 6 Participant,’ he wrote in a Jan. 29 social media post.

He wants people to know: “We were all denied constitutional due process, and that is why it made sense for President Trump to pardon basically everyone.”

“This pardon, it really gives to all of us a new lease on life,” he said. “We get to start fresh.”

A Christmas card sent from a supporter in Poland to Alexander Sheppard while he was in prison, in Columbus, Ohio, on Jan. 28, 2025. Samira Bouaou/The Epoch Times

Mother of 8 Has Some Regrets but Bright Outlook

Rachel Powell says she went to Washington on Jan. 6 to protect America’s future for her eight children and seven grandchildren—but ended up being separated from them for many months because of it.

Now 44, Powell said she had harbored concerns—which grew after the 2020 election—about election integrity in her home state of Pennsylvania. She wanted her children to inherit “a fair and free vote.”

“Everything in America depends on that,” she said.

But Powell admits regretting some of her actions on Jan. 6. Outrage over officers’ seemingly unprovoked use of force hijacked her better judgment, she said.

Accused of pushing barricades, Powell said that was a misperception. “The police were moving the barricades towards us,” she said.

“And people like me, I wasn’t going to move,” Powell said. “I was going to stand there and hold the line—because I had the right to.”

She entered several locations in and around the Capitol. People were jammed into the West Terrace tunnel and falling on top of each other.

“I could hear a woman screaming for help at the bottom of that pile,” near the tunnel entrance, Powell said.

Powell helped other people to pull fallen protesters out of the way. “By [the] time we got to the bottom of that pile … there was Roseanne Boyland, clearly dead at my feet,” she said.

Horrified and fearful for her safety, Powell retreated to the other side of the building.

In an act she now sees as irrational, she decided to break a window. Powell thought that creating a new ingress point for protesters would prevent other deaths. “And I know that that sounds crazy, but that’s what it was,” she said.

Powell said people in the crowd passed implements to her, which she used to strike the window frame, including an object that prosecutors called “an ice axe.”

Rachel Powell, a Jan. 6 defendant, wears an ankle monitor in a self-portrait taken during home confinement in Pennsylvania. Courtesy of Rachel Powell

“And from using that tool for probably 60 seconds, they gave me a deadly weapons charge,” she said, adding that the axe “disappeared back into the crowd” and she “never saw it again.”

Shortly after that, police fired exploding canisters of noxious gas, and she couldn’t see or breathe. “It’s like, all of a sudden, it just snapped me out of it. And I was like, ‘What are you doing?’” she said.

Powell struggled her way out and left.

In a little more than a week, the FBI circulated a “wanted” poster showing pictures of her in a pink knit hat and sunglasses.

On Feb. 4, 2021, police raided her home in Mercer County, Pennsylvania; they broke through the door as a helicopter hovered overhead. Powell, who wasn’t home then, turned herself in. She was freed under strict home confinement rules.

Afterward, a court ordered Powell’s minor children to remain in the custody of another relative. The separation was particularly gut-wrenching because Powell enjoyed more togetherness with her children than many moms. She became a single mother after her 17-year marriage disintegrated and was also a homeschooler and homesteader.

Her case finally went to a bench trial in mid-2023. She denied leading any organized effort to overtake the Capitol despite using a bullhorn to direct other protesters. Powell told The Epoch Times that she borrowed the bullhorn from another protester, and she was relaying information about the Capitol’s layout based solely on her observations that day—her first visit to the Capitol.

“I did not know the layout of the whole Capitol,” she said, alleging that prosecutors “tried to paint me as a ringleader.”

In late 2023, a judge convicted Powell of nine charges, including obstruction of an official proceeding, destruction of government property, civil disorder, and “physical violence … with a deadly or dangerous weapon.”

Rachel Powell speaks to press after being released outside the DC Central Detention Facility in Washington on Jan. 21, 2025. Powell was also known as the “Pink Hat Lady” or “Bullhorn Lady.” Kayla Bartkowski/Getty Images

In early 2024, she began serving a prison term of 57 months—nearly five years—with no credit for three years of house arrest.

“I don’t understand how that’s happening in America, that American citizens can be detained in their homes for undetermined amounts of time,” she said, calling that practice an injustice that should end.

Powell’s experiences at a West Virginia prison caused her even more concern.

She was housed at the Federal Correctional Complex Hazelton—a facility where whistleblowers alleged “a rampant culture of abuse and misconduct,” several senators wrote in September 2023.

They called on the Attorney General and Bureau of Prisons to investigate. The Epoch Times was unable to determine the results of that probe by publication time.

Powell alleges she witnessed deplorable conditions and medical neglect of inmates, echoing the whistleblowers’ complaints.

Now, Powell said she is on a mission to reform conditions at that prison “because once you see it, you can’t unsee it, and it would be wrong not to do something about it and to leave those women in there, suffering.”

“It’s the right thing to do,” she said—the same phrase she used to describe her motivation for participating in the Jan. 6 protest.

But if she could do it over again, Powell said she would have just sat down in protest, “and I would have never left that public sidewalk—ever.”

After being pardoned, Powell sees a bright future—for America and her family.

“I love our president. I think he’s a good man. I think the next four years are going to be fantastic … and I think that the time is ripe for these changes,” she said.

Being away from her loved ones made her value them more.

“We’re all gonna be stronger because of this, and we’re all more loving … we want more unity in our family,” she said.

“It’s like a phoenix rising from the ashes … I really think it’s going to be beautiful.”

Pre-Dawn Tactical Team Arrests Husband-to-Be

Barry Ramey, then a 38-year-old aircraft mechanic, was living a good life in sunny Florida and was engaged to be married.

Barry Ramey, 41, of Broward County, Fla., in a self portrait taken at a halfway house in January 2025. Courtesy of Barry Ramey

But around 5:30 a.m. on April 21, 2022, as he left his apartment to go to work, a tactical team rushed him in the parking lot, “flashbangs thrown at me, and guns pointed at me,” Ramey said. That was nearly 16 months after Jan. 6, 2021—and two months before his planned wedding date.

Afterward, Ramey said he accepted responsibility for his actions, which included discharging pepper spray at police on Jan. 6. But he said the accusations and punishment he faced as a result were “over-the-top.”

“I know I committed a criminal act, but I’m not a criminal … I don’t live a life of crime,” Ramey, now 41, told The Epoch Times after Trump pardoned him. He had no prior criminal history, court records confirm.

As Ramey awaited word on a possible pardon, “it was definitely a nail-biting situation,” he said. Ramey thought that he might only get his sentence commuted because his assault conviction classified him as a violent offender.

He also was connected to the Proud Boys, one of the most controversial groups of Jan. 6 defendants.

On Jan. 6, Ramey gathered with the Proud Boys group, although he did not know who they were at that time, his attorney said in a court record. Since then, Ramey said he and other Jan. 6 defendants started a Proud Boys chapter “to look out for one another in very dangerous situations” while incarcerated.

Five Proud Boys were among the 14 offenders whose sentences Trump commuted; they were freed from prison, but their convictions remain in their records.

Ramey received a “full and unconditional” pardon.

“It feels good to know I don’t have to live my life as a convicted felon,” he said. “I can go back to being a productive member of society and trying to leave the world a better place than I found it.”

In March 2023, Ramey was sentenced to five years in prison for felony charges of civil disorder and “assaulting, resisting, or impeding certain officers,” a Justice Department statement noted, along with misdemeanors for disorderly conduct and “physical violence” on the Capitol grounds; he did not enter the building, his attorney said.

Prosecutors argued he deserved a harsher prison term because he attacked police with a “deadly and dangerous weapon”—the pepper spray.

Ramey countered: “The police use it all the time. They even get pepper-sprayed in their training. So [if] it wasn’t deadly and dangerous then, is it deadly and dangerous now?”

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