After admittedly violating his pre-trial release conditions in order to watch MyPillow CEO Mike Lindell’s symposium, a QAnon adherent charged with storming the U.S. Capitol on Jan. 6 will not get a soft landing.
A federal judge revoked Douglas Jensen’s bond on Thursday, putting him back in jail pending trial.
“Mr. Jensen’s conduct appears to have violated his conditions of release” in multiple ways, U.S. District Judge Timothy Kelly found during a telephone conference.
Judge Kelly found Jensen was unlikely to abide by any restrictions imposed by the court, particularly prohibitions on accessing the internet.
“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,” Kelly added.
For Jensen, the siren song of Lindell’s so-called “Cyber Symposium regarding the recount of the presidential election” had enough of an allure to put his freedom on the line. Prosecutors say Jensen also accessed a WiFi-connected iPhone to stream news from Rumble.
Jensen, 44, conceded that he used his daughter’s iPhone to access the live-stream on conspiracy theories regarding the 2020 presidential election.
Asking the court for a second chance, Jensen compared the violation in a defense filing to a drug relapse.
“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,” his lawyer Christopher Michael Davis wrote.
Assistant U.S. Attorney Hava Arin Levenson Mirell bristled at that analogy during Thursday’s hearing.
“This is not equivalent to a drug relapse,” Mirell told the court. “There is no chemical dependency here.”
Mirell called the comparison off base for another reason: Jensen previously claimed that he had been “duped” into storming the Capitol, suggesting that he had been cured of his delusions.
“He claimed that he had been deceived by QAnon conspiracy theories,” the prosecutor said.
“He can’t have it both ways,” she added later.
Judge Kelly agreed, saying that the violation undermines his claim to have “turned a corner” on what Jensen learned to be a “pack of lies.”
“It is now clear that he has not experienced a transformation that his lawyer previously described,” the judge added.
Jensen’s lawyer defended his prior remarks, describing his client as having a “compulsion” that he is working on in therapy.
“He is not a bumbling idiot,” Davis said, referring to his client.
The lawyer added that his client has learned his lesson.
“It’s crystal clear to everyone what this prohibition from getting on the internet is,” Davis said.
Though Davis called the prohibition “Orwellian,” the lawyer concedes his client was wrong.
A pre-trial services officer said the agency “lost confidence” that Jensen will comply with his conditions of release or that his wife will keep him in compliance.
The prosecutor noted that Jensen’s violation occurred some two weeks after Judge Kelly released him on bond.
“Now, I thought it was a relatively close call as to whether Mr. Jensen could or should be released under the Bail Reform Act,” Kelly said, referring to his prior ruling.
Prosecutors identify Jensen as the man who spearheaded the mob chasing Officer Eugene Goodman up two flights of stairs of the building, wearing a QAnon T-shirt with the conspiratorial group’s slogans “Trust the Plan” and “Where We Go One, We Go All.”
Mirell also depicted him as a particularly dangerous and dogmatic member of the pro-Donald Trump mob, and the prosecutor added that Jensen’s latest violation falls into a pattern of that “insubordination.”
“He simply cannot be trusted,” Mirell said.
She urged him to grant Jensen no second chances.
Ultimately, the judge did not.
[Image via SAUL LOEB/AFP via Getty Images]
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