Trump supporters gesture to U.S. Capitol Police in the hallway outside of the Senate chamber at the Capitol in Washington in January 6, 2021. Doug Jensen, center. (AP Photo/Manuel Balce Ceneta, File)
Want the best of VICE News straight to your inbox? Sign up here.A QAnon supporter who was among the first people to storm the Capitol on Jan. 6 has been sent back to jail for breaching his bail conditions to watch a bogus cyber conference organized by the MyPillow guy.On Thursday morning a federal judge in Washington, D.C., revoked Doug Jensen’s bail bond after prosecutors said he’d breached his bail conditions, which included refraining from accessing the internet.“Mr. Jensen’s conduct appears to have violated his conditions of release” in multiple ways, U.S. District Judge Timothy Kelly said during the remote hearing. “Given his inability to comply, his failure to understand the potential consequences, I don’t see that he has had the ‘wake-up call’ that he needs.”Jensen admitted he’d used his daughter’s iPhone to watch MyPillow CEO Mike Lindell’s Cyber Symposium, which took place over three days last month. Lindell billed the event as the moment when he would finally reveal evidence that China had hacked the 2020 presidential election to make Donald Trump lose. In the end, Lindell produced no evidence.The prosecutors said Jensen’s wife had facilitated his breach of bail conditions after Jensen told her that it would be OK if he watched the phone after she had turned it on.Prosecutors also revealed that Jensen had accessed the internet on a separate occasion to watch videos on YouTube-alternative Rumble, where many accounts share QAnon conspiracies. Jensen became famous after he was captured on video leading a group of rioters into the Capitol and chasing Officer Eugene Goodman up several flights of stairs before confronting Goodman’s colleagues in the Rotunda.https://twitter.com/igorbobic/status/1346911809274478594Having spent five months “languishing in a D.C. jail cell,” Jensen last month claimed he had come to his senses and now realized the QAnon conspiracy that led him from his home in Des Moines to Washington, was “a pack of lies.”Jensen’s lawyer, Christopher Davis, attempted to convince the judge that his client’s actions were similar to that of a drug addict relapsing.“If a drug abuser relapses, there is typically a sanction protocol in place to help the person deal with his/her substance abuse issues. Mr. Jensen requests that this Honorable Court treat his violation is a similar manner,” Davis wrote in a submission to the court.During the hearing, Davis told the court his client was in therapy, though didn’t elaborate on what it was for.But Assistant U.S. Attorney Hava Arin Levenson Mirell dismissed the comparison: “This is not equivalent to a drug relapse; there is no chemical dependency here.”“Jensen can’t be trusted,” Mirell added.
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