There are many stories about January 6 that fall by the wayside. Several January 6 defendants got extensive media coverage, especially in the immediate aftermath of January 6, but this is not representative of the overall body.
Most defendants remain nameless, faceless hostages. Real Americans have been rendered as caricatures as a way of pigeonholing them and glossing over the real experiences of that complicated day.
OATH KEEPERS AND JANUARY 6
Kelly Meggs was a humble Florida resident and general manager in the car business before January 6, not a soldier or commando.
A loving husband, father and grandfather, Meggs got involved in the much-maligned Oath Keepers organization to assist in disaster relief, support local law enforcement, maintain peace during public demonstrations and protect private property from rioters. Meggs then, finding the organization in disarray, wound up as the leader of the Florida Oath Keepers chapter.
This desire to do right by the community would ultimately be weaponized against Meggs and his fellow Oath Keepers (Jessica Watkins, Ken Harrelson, Joe Hackett, and even Kelly’s wife Connie Meggs) following the events of January 6.
As explained in earlier interviews with Jessica Watkins and with Ken Harrelson, Kelly Meggs and company went to Washington, DC, on January 6 to work security for various speaking events and VIPs.
The Oath Keepers had Secret Service background checks and were lawfully present to protect permitted gatherings.
** Please donate to the Meggs recovery fund here.
The Oath Keepers were only at the Capitol to monitor scheduled events and VIP’s like Simone Gold and John Strand, for instance. Several Oath Keepers wandered into the Capitol to assist others long after any breaches of the building took place.
In fact, before entering the Capitol, the Oath Keepers stood on the steps of the Columbus Doors singing the national anthem.
While inside the Capitol Rotunda, Kelly Meggs and the Oath Keepers stopped vandalism, prayed with protestors, and fatefully came to the assistance of Capitol Police Officer Harry Dunn who had a mental breakdown while surrounded by hostile protestors.
Kelly Meggs and the Oath Keepers personally helped police lead protestors out of the Capitol and halted further entrance into the building. By any rational account, Kelly Meggs and the Oath Keepers were good Samaritans – heroes. Not according to Joe Biden’s Department of Justice.
CAPTIVITY
Like most of the prisoners caught up in January 6, the Oath Keepers were made patsies and bogeymen for nonsensical narratives.
The Oath Keepers, whose mission is to keep the peace and support lawful authorities, were framed as a far-right, anti-government militia.
Patriots, who protected the Capitol and its officers from vandals and angry mobs, were framed for seditious conspiracy and labeled domestic terrorists. Kelly and Connie Meggs had their home raided in early 2021, and both were taken into custody.
The corrupt betrayal of good Samaritans didn’t end with a booking. The Oath Keepers were largely denied bond and kept in pretrial detention.
It was after being moved around the country by the US Marshals that Kelly Meggs finally arrived in the DC Gulag, where we met as fellow inmates.
From that point on, Meggs and his fellow Oath Keepers, as well as myself and dozens of other January 6 hostages, spent months in solitary confinement.
The DOJ and DC jail deprived us of every basic liberty Americans hold sacred, from the Bill of Rights to the Equal Protection Clause of the Fourteenth Amendment.
After living with Meggs for years in jail, and having watched thousands of hours of the government’s own video, I can definitively say that he is no insurrectionist or seditionist – but he’s more than a car dealer.
Soon after arriving in the DC Gulag, Kelly Meggs joined the detail team and worked as a custodian of wing C2B (the “Patriot Pod”). Meggs was up every morning to serve our breakfast, usually 3 or 4 AM, and made sure nobody was skipped over.
I usually stayed up overnight to watch the guards from my cell, so I never missed an interaction or a smartass joke from Meggs about our “meals”. Meggs had a dry yet fun wit.
And wit was needed to get through captivity. He, I and Jose Padilla would often pass the time by doing crossword puzzles whenever they were available in our unit. With his age came a fountain of knowledge and wisdom worth respecting.
He sought out fellowship in Christ and a healthy appetite for scripture. Religious services were denied to January 6 inmates in the DC jail, however.
Bible study groups popped up occasionally but quickly fell apart due to jailhouse politics and informant shenanigans.
When there was a breakdown in religious fellowship and a lack of trust between inmates, a new Bible study group was founded in C2B, and Kelly Meggs was unanimously chosen to head it as our Presbyter.
Everyone trusted and respected Meggs. Meggs was fun, yet stoic, never quick to anger, and never lost track of what mattered most in the world – even more than proving his innocence – reuniting with his wife and family.
While Connie Meggs was fortunate enough not to end up in the DC Gulag, being granted bond, she was still prosecuted to the fullest extent of the law and would later herself serve time in prison after being convicted.
In all of this time, four years of hell, Connie and Kelly remained steadfastly loyal and supportive of one another.
DUE PROCESS DENIED
Despite getting railroaded at every step of the way, Kelly Meggs and the Oath Keepers worked tirelessly on their cases.
Often denied access to their attorneys, denied evidence, and forced to live in a literal insane asylum wrongly labeled a jail “treatment facility”, they spent day after day catching the DOJ in lies and finding exculpatory evidence where prosecutors said there wasn’t.
Meggs and his codefendants built elaborate presentations proving their innocence and persevered in the face of overwhelming odds.
** Please donate to the Meggs recovery fund here.
The DOJ attempted to thwart fundraising for Oath Keeper legal representation. After months of trial, and numerous lies by federal prosecutors being exposed, a biased DC jury convicted all the Oath Keepers – Kelly Meggs being found guilty of all charges excluding destruction of government property (but including the seditious conspiracy charge).
The DOJ’s prosecutors withheld exculpatory video and even doctored footage to secure the conviction of the Oath Keepers.
Numerous government witnesses committed perjury in order to secure convictions as well, such as Special Agent David Lazarus and Capitol Police Officer Harry Dunn, and the government stooped so low as to enlist paid pedophile informants for testimony.
After the DOJ initially sought 25 years in prison for Meggs, after he’d already spent over three years in captivity, Judge Amit Mehta delivered him a 12-year sentence.
Judge Mehta is known as one of the most biased, partisan judges to oversee January 6 cases, and he made sure to make examples out of the Oath Keepers for a political narrative. Kelly Meggs was not beaten, however.
While prisoned, and knowing his innocence, Meggs was prepared for a drawn-out appeals process. During this time he wrote two books on his thoughts, values, and understanding of both January 6 and the political landscape as he saw it; Fight, Fight, Fight! (released first, chronologically written second) and One Question Remains: Your Move (co-written with Robert Morss).
** Please donate to the Meggs recovery fund here.
FREE AT LAST
Kelly and I parted ways near the end of 2022. I went to prison and Meggs was still being held captive pending the Oath Keepers trial. Upon President Trump taking office, Kelly Meggs was finally released from prison, and his 12-year sentence became irrelevant.
Don Neuen of Cowboy Logic, a longtime advocate for Kelly and those who’d spent years rotting in the DC jail and elsewhere, immediately got Meggs onto an episode of Live From Studio 6B:
After four brutal years of isolation, slander and captivity, Kelly Meggs was a free man again. And after two years without contact, we reconnected, and I had the great honor of interviewing him for three hours about his story, the full scope of which cannot be captured by any one article:
Now that the January 6 defendants are no longer subject to probation or supervised release, we can speak freely with each other.
The patriots who languished behind bars in the DC Gulag have been hastily reconnecting. With each day, more and more sign on to tell their story.
What really happened on January 6, how they were smeared by the feds and media, and what they suffered through while locked up, and much more.
My phone has been on fire today as I reconnected with many of the men I was incarcerated with after January 6. And I’m now prepared to unveil a project that has been simmering in my head some time.
For 3 years after January 6, as I and other J6 political prisoners languished… pic.twitter.com/mForP3n8Ky
— Tim Hale – Criminally Funny J6er (@LouisofMonmouth) December 26, 2024
These interviews, along with hundreds of pages of primary documents, will form the basis for a multi-volume history series, Artifice and Betrayal: The History of the DC Gulag.
Now that their voices have been restored, the defendants will be the ones to write the authoritative history of January 6 and the lawfare that followed, not the prosecutors and media.
** Please donate to the Meggs recovery fund here.
REBUILDING
During my interview with Meggs I listened to one of the most disturbing things I’d heard yet from another January 6 defendant.
Last year Kelly Meggs’ daughter had a medical emergency and was taken from her home by paramedics, leading to Meggs’ grandchildren being taken by DCF (Department of Children and Families).
Police told her that her children would be fine being left to sleep in the house for the night. That was a lie, and Kelly Meggs’ grandchildren were essentially kidnapped and held by the government for a year.
Kelly: The next morning my daughter gets released from the hospital at 9:30. At 9 o’clock DCF is in my home taking the children.
Tim: What the f*ck?
Kelly: They took the kids!
DCF tried to claim Meggs’ daughter was unfit to parent by claiming she was hospitalized because of alcohol, though they later had to admit they were wrong and she was in fact hospitalized due to a medical condition.
DCF also tried to claim that the home Meggs’ grandchildren were living in was unsuitable, but it turned out they had actually inspected Kelly Meggs’ home (Meggs and his wife Connie were in prison at the time) and not his daughter’s home (where the children actually lived).
Lie after lie. First the government took grandparents hostage and then they took grandchildren hostage.
Kelly: They take my grandkids and they make my daughter go through some program bullshit, whatever it is. So they take my grandkids and they tell my daughter, “Based on your medical condition” – because now we’re gonna admit it’s a medical condition – “We’re gonna give the kids back as soon as your mother gets home from prison.”
That was in the end of June. The very end of June. Very end of June comes my wife gets home. Okay, let’s get the kids back. “Oh, yeah, they’ll be back in a couple days. Don’t worry. Everything’s fine. Now you’re good.”
Well now we wait. End of July. What’s going on with the kids? “Oh, you guys have them back in the July. No problem. You don’t worry about it. Everything’s fine.” Well, we’re arguing, we’re doing our visitation, little bullshit like that and…
It’s- it’s- it’s elevating in frustration because we should have kids back right now and in September the case worker says to my daughter, “Well, the reason the kids aren’t home is because your mother is a domestic terrorist.”
Tim: Get the fuck out- Where were they keeping the kids, in foster care?
Kelly: Yeah, they’re in foster care. And so that’s what they’re telling her, that “Your mother must have mental issues because she was one of the January 6th Capitol people and so we have to figure out if she’s some kind of domestic terrorist or something. We’re just not sure what to do because she could be violent and extreme, and we’re worried that she’s starting to…” Uhm-
Tim: Recidivism? She’s gonna go back to a life of insurrection?
Kelly: Hah, no, they were worried that she was affecting my daughter. Because my daughter was starting to fight for her kids, like my daughter’s like, “Where are my kids? How come my kids aren’t back?” “You need to calm down.”
Of course you’re gonna be mad! They have your kids, right? So then we get guaranteed. “We’re gonna go ahead and end of October guaranteed.” End of October comes, no kids.
The kids can’t come home because there’s no home study. We have to have somebody come in.
Check the house, make sure it’s all clean, make sure everything’s good, make sure there’s food, you know, the normal shit, right? So the lady has come already two months earlier and done that when my wife was home.
Tim: Wouldn’t probation have already visited the house in preparation for release?
Kelly: Absolutely, and it was cleared. And the prison’s not gonna release someone that’s mentally unstable into the community.
Then in October they say, “The home study’s not done. They’re still working on it. They’ll let you know.” I’m like, how does a home study take two months? It doesn’t make any sense. Something’s wrong.
The government spent half a year holding Meggs’ grandchildren hostage without any accountability.
Kelly: So in October she tells us, “Well the home study’s not done and some of the higher-ups are what’s holding this up because they don’t necessarily see politically like you guys do.”
And now this is the case worker trying to kind of bridge a gap of like ‘I know you want your kids back but yeah upper management saying you can’t have it back’ right? We’re trying to play the game because we know this works. We’re deal with the government here.
So we know what we got to do. They want us to do something stupid so that they won’t be able to give them back to us. That’s what they’re trying to shoot for. So then it’s Thanksgiving. They don’t get back. Then it’s Christmas for sure.
They don’t get back. And now Donald Trump pardons us and the lady calls my daughter and says, “We’re pretty sure that everything’s clear”. Even with the home study- we’re six months past the home study being done, right? But they’re still not filed.
It’s not filed in court yet. “We’re pretty much past that but there’s still this question with your mom” and my daughter goes “It’s not a problem because she got pardoned”. And they’re like, “Oh, well, that’s great. No big deal then”.
Oh, so everything’s fine again, right? We get a call two days later. They said, “We need a copy of the pardon paperwork and not just something that says she got pardoned. We want the actual copy of the certificate with the seal on it.”
These kids don’t stay in my house! They stay at my daughter’s house! There’s nothing to do with us and they’re holding January 6 against us to keep our grandchildren from us.
Tim: I know bureaucracy and government in general… There’s always gonna be like-
Kelly: This was coming from way higher.
Tim: Like state level, county level?
Kelly: Way higher. Let me tell you something, if you don’t think the feds can fuck with you now, you’re wrong.
Tim: Yeah.
Kelly: They can, and they were. This order came from way above anybody around here.
Kelly’s grandchildren were taken for political reasons, likely thanks to the Biden administration. Only after President Trump assumed office, pardoned Connie Meggs and commuted Kelly Meggs, did the winds change in the favor of the Meggs family.
Their grandchildren are finally home. The Meggs family is whole again. But life isn’t what it used to be. As of this writing, Kelly is out of work and his family is struggling financially. Employers have discriminated against him and rejected him because they’re afraid of the “optics”.
Clearly, it’s not the optics of a good Samaritan engaging in riot control, nor the optics of saving a police officer, nor the optics of having been released from captivity by the President of the United States.
The story of Kelly Meggs is the story of a man from a humble background who stood up for his community and his country only to be crushed by the very authorities he risked his life to safeguard.
The Meggs family needs help to get by as they rebuild. Please help them however you can, HERE.
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