The image was an immediate symbol of January 6, 2021: a man in blue jeans and a thick plaid shirt lying in the chambers of then-House Speaker Nancy Pelosi, a smile on his face and his shoes resting atop a black spiral-bound notebook on paper. Office corner.
The smirk and platform shoes belong to Richard Barnett, a 64-year-old former window salesman from Gravette, Arkansas, who goes by the nickname Bigo. He used his time in the office to pocket an envelope with speaker’s letterhead and write a blunt letter to Pelosi herself. But it was his image that really endured, perhaps because of the way it combined vandalism with the threat of violence — he had a stun device on him — and summed up the rioters’ mockery of the country’s democratic institutions.
Washington didn’t look like that on Monday, as lawmakers in a quiet, snow-covered Capitol witnessed President-elect Donald Trump’s November victory. The Bigos of the world have no complaints about this election. But the story of his last four years — during which he was convicted, sentenced, and apparently tried to trade on his fame — is every bit as revealing as that first photo. He spent the day in a low-security federal prison in Seagoville, Texas, a place where inmates are not allowed Internet access but where he can access the Internet. He was able to convey his thoughts on social media All the same. These days, he is a right-wing hero, and his fortunes may be tied to the fate of the president-elect who promised to pardon people like him.
What happens when you put your shoes on a desk in the speaker’s office?
“For better or worse, you have become one of the faces of January 6th, and I think you are enjoying it,” Judge Christopher Cooper told him last year.
“Biju was here”
Over the past four years, nearly 1,600 people have been prosecuted in connection with the Capitol riot, including Trump himself, and hundreds of those convicted have already returned to their old lives. My colleague Alan Feuer, who covers federal law enforcement, published a series of fascinating interviews with eight of them today.
I wanted to look at the story of someone who is still in prison, whose conviction remains a right-wing case, but remains evidence of the mess that Trump and his supporters are now trying to undo.
Barnett’s lawyers did not answer my questions about whether or not Barnett was seeking a pardon from Trump (although one did send me a link to a fundraising website that Barnett uses).
Barnett himself declined my request to interview him.
According to prosecutors, body camera footage and his own words, Barnett entered Pelosi’s office suite with a flagpole and a stun device hidden in a walking stick. He sat down at a desk, took an envelope with her signature addressed to former Rep. Billy Long — now Trump’s pick to run the IRS — and left a note saying: “Hey Nancy, Biggo was here, bitch.” When an officer escorted him out of the office, he complied, but urged her to “be patriotic” and said, “Don’t get on the wrong side, you might get hurt.”
In a video taken on January 6 by Ms. Pelosi’s daughter, Alexandra, a documentary filmmaker, Ms. Pelosi said at one point: “Obviously they are ransacking our offices and all the rest of it; This is nothing. “Our concern is about personal safety, it goes beyond everything.”
Barnett left the building after being exposed to the chemical spray. Outside the Capitol, he told a New York Times reporter what he had done — though he insisted that he had left a quarter to pay for the envelope, and that he had been shoved into the speaker’s office by the crowd.
“Maybe I’ll tell them that’s what happened all the way to D.C. Jail,” he said that day.
He was right.
The crazy uncle’s defense
After Barnett was charged with eight counts, he appeared to become extremely frustrated with the system, and at one point threw a tantrum during a virtual court hearing.
“They’re pulling this!” he shouted from prison during a hearing in March. “They’re letting everyone out!”
Later, it was prosecutors who were upset. They said in court filings that he appeared on Russian state television, sold autographed photos of himself in the speaker’s booth — practically foreshadowing a flood of merchandise related to Trump’s 2024 felony conviction — and deemed his memo to Pelosi copyrighted.
Barnett has pleaded not guilty. At his trial in January 2023, his lawyer tried to present a new defence.
“He’s not a domestic terrorist.” Joseph McBride said“But he’s everyone’s crazy redneck uncle from out of town.”
Barnett He himself took the stand Using an expletive, he said he was guilty of being an “idiot” but not of breaking the law.
The jury found him guilty of all charges after two hours of deliberations.
“Barnett recognizes no authority but himself, and is willing to do whatever it takes to get what he wants, even if it means harming others, stealing, or breaking the law,” prosecutors wrote in a memo before Judge Cooper sentenced him to more than one sentence. Four years.
He bides his time
Like Trump, Barnett has received some good news this year. A Supreme Court ruling in June that makes it more difficult to charge the Jan. 6 defendants with obstruction of an official proceeding — a charge Barnett was convicted of — could help him appeal that charge, although the judge denied his request for early release from prison in Waiting for this appeal. .
And then, of course, there was Trump’s election, which Barnett said on Show X he learned about through “cheap static prison radio.”
“Congratulations Donald, congratulations America, congratulations to all my fellow J6’ers,” he said in a post on a verified account bearing his name.
He appears to maintain an active presence on X, where he has contributed to expressing his disgust at the Hunter Biden pardon and the spending deal that prevented a government shutdown. He also used X to announce in 2022 that he would grow a goatee “until all my fellow political prisoners #J6 are released.” (I was told it took too long.)
The prison doesn’t allow inmates to post on X, but a person familiar with its inner workings told me the prison believes Barnett’s letters are being posted to him by someone on the outside.