An Iowa man who was among the first people to breach the Capitol building on Jan. 6, 2021, has been sentenced to five years in prison in relation to five felony charges related to the breach.
Douglas Jensen, 43, was also given three years of supervised release, and was ordered to pay $2,000 in restitution.
In September, Jensen was found guilty by a Washington, D.C., jury of seven charges, which included five felonies, in relation to the Capitol breach on Jan. 6, 2021—the day lawmakers gathered for a joint session of Congress to count and certify the electoral votes related to the 2020 presidential election.
The five felony charges were: assaulting, resisting, or impeding a law enforcement officer; obstruction of an official proceeding; interfering with a law enforcement officer during a civil disorder; entering and remaining in a restricted building or grounds with a dangerous weapon; and disorderly and disruptive conduct in a restricted building or grounds with a dangerous weapon, according to the U.S. Attorney’s Office for the District of Columbia. The dangerous weapon being referred to was a knife in Jensen’s pocket.
The other two counts the jury determined Jensen was guilty of are misdemeanor offenses: disorderly conduct in a Capitol building; and parading, demonstrating, or picketing in a Capitol building.
Douglas Jensen is seen in a file mugshot. (Polk County Jail via AP)
Events on Jan. 6
The government’s evidence at trial stated that Jensen illegally entered U.S. Capitol grounds around 2 p.m. on Jan. 6, 2021, and had a knife with a three-inch blade inside his pocket.
Prosecutors said Jensen was among the first 10 people who breached the Capitol building after he had scaled the outer walls of the Capitol and climbed through a broken window to enter the building.
At the time, Jensen was at the front of a crowd that was advancing further into a building in the Capitol complex. He encountered a lone Capitol Police officer—Eugene Goodman—who had ordered Jensen to stop, put his hands up, and back up, according to prosecutors.
But Jensen continued to advance along with the crowd as Goodman retreated and eventually reached a staircase where he turned and ran up the flight of stairs in an attempt to get to backup. The crowd stopped advancing after reaching an area where several more Capitol Police officers were present, near the Senate Chamber.
According to a release from the U.S. Attorney’s Office for the District of Columbia, Jensen was “escorted out of the Capitol after about 40 minutes, but he re-entered shortly thereafter” through a different set of doors. Per the release, “[w]hile inside the Rotunda, [Jensen] shoved and berated Metropolitan Police Department officers who were clearing rioters from the Capitol Building.”
A large group of protesters stand on the East steps of the Capitol Building after breaching its grounds in Washington, D.C., on Jan. 6, 2021. (Jon Cherry/Getty Images)
No Violence, Property Damage: Defense Attorney
Jensen was first arrested in Des Moines on Jan. 8, 2021, and had pleaded not guilty to all counts.
Jensen’s defense attorney, Christopher Davis, said during the jury trial that began Sept. 20 that no evidence, including video footage of Jensen on the day, shows the Jan. 6 defendant engaging in any violence or property damage.
“You will not see this man lay a hand on anyone,” Davis said of Jensen.
A federal judge in July 2021 had ordered that Jensen be freed from jail pending trial, as he was not facing charges related to violence. U.S. District Judge Timothy Kelly, a Trump nominee, said at the time that while Jensen “clearly disobeyed” the Capitol police officer, he was not accused of toppling any barricades, damaging any property, or fighting with anybody at the Capitol.
But at the start of September 2021, Jensen was ordered back to jail after he was caught using the internet, which violated one of the conditions of his release from jail.
Federal prosecutors requested 64 months in prison with three years of supervised release and fines, while Jensen’s attorney, Davis, asked for 27 months in prison.
In June 2021, in arguing for Jensen to be released on bond pending trial, Davis said in a court filing that his client “became a victim of numerous conspiracy theories that were being fed to him over the internet by a number of very clever people.”
Jensen had traveled to the Capitol to observe “what he thought was going to be ‘The Storm,'” which Davis described as “the moment all those with ideologies at odds with what he was hearing and reading on the internet were going to be arrested.” Davis emphasized that Jensen went “to observe.”
Douglas Jensen stands with other protesters, facing Capitol police officers as they try to stop people from entering the Capitol building in Washington on Jan. 6, 2021. (Saul Loeb/AFP via Getty Images)
In the sentencing memorandum filed Dec. 9, Davis wrote: "Everyone is different. Each person comes to the table with many different strengths, weakness, and from different backgrounds. Mr. Jensen’s actions on January 6th were fueled by an assortment of conspiracy theories, especially QAnon. Mr. Jensen’s personal background puts him in the distinct category of being an outlier among the January 6 defendants.
“The core catalyst for his belief system is tied to events that were, at one point in time, simply beyond his control. The United States cites many obstruction cases, but none of these individuals came to DC for the reasons that brought Jensen to Washington on January 6. He is different and should be treated accordingly.”
Posts attributed to an anonymous figure named “Q” online often alluded to government efforts to suppress individual freedoms and advance globalist agendas. The Q, commonly referred to as QAnon, posts on 4chan and 8chan message boards attracted attention from a growing number of people with varying interpretations of the posts.
Some people began to claim and believe that the posts suggested that certain members of the world’s social, economic, and political elites have engaged in egregious crimes, including child sex trafficking, abuse, and cannibalism. Another notion that people who attribute their beliefs to Q promulgate is that former President Donald Trump was or is secretly fighting certain elite figures during his time in the White House and that a so-called “Storm” that involved mass arrests was coming.
Assistant U.S. Attorney Hava Mirell said in her closing arguments of the jury trial on Sept. 23: “Doug Jensen would not be stopped until he got what he came for on Jan. 6,” adding that it was to stop the peaceful transfer of power, reported KCCI.
“Doug Jensen was proud of himself on Jan. 6. There were heroes at the Capitol that day. Mr. Jensen was not one of them,” Mirell said.
People demonstrate on the National Mall in Washington, on Jan. 6, 2021, amid widespread concerns related to election integrity. (Mandel Ngan/AFP via Getty Images)
The joint session of Congress on Jan. 6, 2021, was temporarily interrupted when a sizable group of protesters entered the Capitol building and its surrounds. Outside were thousands of other mostly peaceful protesters who had gathered in Washington on the day to express concerns about election integrity.
A total of five deaths were recorded in the immediate aftermath of the Jan. 6, 2021 incident. Three of the deaths were ultimately determined to be natural causes, one of the deaths was ruled a homicide due to actions of a Capitol Police officer, and the remaining death was ruled as an accident, but video unsealed in December 2021 suggested that the person was struck by a police officer prior as she lay unconscious near the Capitol building.
As of December, close to 900 individuals have been dealt charges accusing them of having committed federal crimes on Jan. 6, 2021. More than 460 of them have pleaded guilty.
