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By James Bickerton
News Reporter
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For Jake Lang, a 29-year-old Donald Trump supporter who spent four years in prison for his alleged involvement in the January 6, 2021, Capitol Hill riot, though he was never convicted of any offenses, January 20, 2025, was "like a Biblical miracle."
Sitting in his prison cell, Lang heard Trump had pardoned around 1,500 people convicted over their involvement in the 2021 storming of Congress, with charges dropped against those, like him, still battling through the courts.
Speaking to Newsweek, Lang said it was "like the Red Sea was parted," adding: "A guarantee that God had given me years ago that he would save me, that he would not forsake me, came true in that moment."
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When the pardon was issued, Lang was facing a number of serious charges, including "assaulting, resisting, or impeding" law enforcement and civil disorder, with prosecutors alleging he struck police officers with an aluminum baseball bat and kicked one who fell on the ground. Lang has consistently denied any wrongdoing and insists he acted in self-defense after violence was initiated by the police.
Lang is currently running for Congress, hoping to take the Florida Senate seat vacated by Marco Rubio when he was appointed as Secretary of State by Trump and currently occupied by Republican Senator Ashlee Moody on an interim basis. A special election for the seat is scheduled for November 2026 and Lang is hoping to beat Moody in a primary contest to become the official Republican candidate.
January 6, 2021
Lang, an e-commerce entrepreneur originally from New York State, was one of tens of thousands of Trump supporters who gathered in Washington, D.C., on January 6, 2021, to protest what the then-president claimed was the "rigged" 2020 presidential election.
The day held great significance as Congress was expected to certify the election result, rebuking Trump's allegations of systematic fraud, though some Republicans refused to do so.
Like Trump, Lang remains convinced the 2020 presidential election was rigged in favor of Joe Biden, though the federal Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency insisted it had been "the most secure" election in American history. A plethora of legal challenges issued by Trump's team failed to get the election result overturned either nationally or in any single state.
The January 6, 2021, demonstration turned violent, with hundreds of Trump supporters storming Congress in a bid to block the election result's certification, sparking chaos in which one demonstrator was shot dead by police whilst dozens of officers were injured.
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According to prosecutors, Lang, wearing a gas mask and wielding a baseball bat, struck officers whilst shouting taunts such as "This is our house, we paid for this f****** building."
When interviewed by Newsweek, Lang didn't deny handling a baseball bat and wearing a mask but insisted he didn't take them to the demonstration, adding: "I presume whoever brought that was probably worried about an Antifa gang jumping them." He also said he only acted in self-defense.
The Congressional hopeful blamed law enforcement for the violence, commenting: "During the course of the police brutality, it escalated to such a crazy nature, people were literally dying, and in order to stop the loss of human life, me and a group of men literally had to put ourselves between the unarmed protesters and this thuggish police group that killed people."
This version of events is contradicted by a 40-minute documentary released by the New York Times and largely based on raw footage, which showed demonstrators approaching a police perimeter outside Congress and attempting to overpower them at what it said was the start of the violence.
Lang told Newsweek that at times, police were "shooting things over the crowd," which were "landing in the middle of thousands of people," causing them to surge forward towards the police, though video shared on social media appears to show the police being engaged before any tear gas or pepper spray was deployed.
According to Lang, during the ruckus, he attempted to rescue Rosanne Boyland, a Trump supporter who died outside Congress, from "the bottom of the dogpile as she was crushed to death" with his arms.
Federal Prison
Following the January 6 riot, Lang was arrested and spent four years in federal prison as his legal team successfully battled to push his trial back, in part because of a Supreme Court case he was involved in against the prosecutor's use of Obstructing an Official Proceeding charges which carried a maximum sentence of 20 years.
Lang said he was moved between different facilities repeatedly after he continued political campaigning in prison, which, together with coronavirus lockdowns, resulted in him spending hundreds of days in solitary confinement.
He said: "They don't want the interviews happening so they'll throw you in solitary and then what we do the second I get in the solitary is we have a call to action go out on like Gateway Pundit...thousands of people call and inundate the jail and they realize I'm too much of a headache, let's just ship him down the road, tell the U.S. Marshals to come pick me up and they're bring me to Virginia or Pennsylvania or New York, God knows where else, all the way out to Oklahoma one time."
According to Lang, Trump was popular in federal prison, in part because he signed the 2018 First Step Act, which introduced additional programs and training for prison officers in a bid to reduce recidivism, but also "because Trump has a swagger that they really like." By contrast, he said: "I only met one Joe Biden supporter the entire time I was in prison."
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During Lang's stint in prison, he remained active with both religion and politics, spending time as an unofficial pastor "doing Bible studies" and "baptizing people."
He said there was "a big black market in prison" with "the prison guards...just smuggling in whatever, and so if I could get my hand on a phone, that's a great weapon on information warfare to use." Lang claimed that in one prison, somebody even told him, "They could get me a cat."
Newsweek contacted the Department of Justice for comment on Thursday via online inquiry form.
January 6 Love Story
During his time in prison, Lang first came across his now fiancé Rachel, another January 6 defendant who was convicted before being released on probation.
He said: "It's a J6 love story, the greatest love story every written in the January 6 world. So Rachel was a Jan 6er and I was on a Twitter space I was doing from my prison cell and she was listening. This is one of the times, very rare, where I had a cell phone...In Brooklyn Federal Prison, Brooklyn, New York.
"We met basically through one of my media interviews...I reached out and we started talking, she started becoming one of the people I trusted and like a right hand of mine while I'm in prison...she's an amazing woman and I couldn't help but love her and ask her to marry."
Run for Congress
Following Trump's pardon, Lang quickly re-engaged with politics, announcing his Florida Senate bid in March 2025 after Rubio joined Trump's cabinet.
Lang painted Senator Moody, Rubio's replacement, as an establishment figure, commenting: "Ashley's an interesting character because she feigns a lot of Trump's policy positions, but at the end of the day, she is a DeSantis loyalist, and on top of that, she has this extremely established background. She's like the polar opposite of an outsider candidate, just like Donald Trump vs Ron DeSantis."
Whilst not a Florida native, Lang said he has deep ties to the state, as "both my grandparents growing up lived in Florida, my mom lives in Florida, and I've lived in Florida myself for different spans."
Lang added: "Beyond my roots here Florida is ready, Florida is the most MAGA state in the country, the area around Mar-a-Lago in the West Palm beach where I live is like the conservative Hollywood."
If elected, Lang is pledging to help advance Trump's "Make America Great Again" (MAGA) agenda.
He said: "For me, my calling for running for United States Senate was more I'm going to continue to bear the touch with Donald Trump to mark America's golden age...
"The old RINO Republican Party, that Trump obliterated when he came in...that old guard, the uniparty, RINOs, establishment hacks whatever you want to call them, they're no longer in control, and with candidates like myself and other Jan Sixers running were seeing this crazy shift where it's not just Trump, it's more MAGA, its more patriots, that are going to be leading the next generation."
While Trump hasn't commented on Lang's campaign, the former January 6 arrestee said he was in touch with the president's team, commenting: "We have a lot of great connections into Team Trump...people that have been his former attorneys, advisors, now people who are working inside his department of justice...it's more just giving them information then they do with it what they want."
Compensation
Asked if he thinks those imprisoned over the January 6 riot should receive compensation, Lang replied: "Of course, 100 percent. I mean, first of all, you have people that lost their entire livelihoods, and there are real monetary damages that happened. People's careers, homes, cars, marriages – all of them dissolved...
"I believe that the Jan 6ers are going to come out of this not even just financially stronger but also in a position to start to make real change. People are going to see us as the vindicated patriots that stood up for the stolen election."
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