Jake Lang is a Florida U.S. Senate candidate who was recently pardoned by President Trump for attacking cops on Jan, 6, 2021 (Photo from Jake Lang Senate campaign)
Could a recent Florida transplant who was charged with beating up cops during the Jan. 6, 2021, U.S. Capitol riot really have a shot at defeating Ashley Moody in the race for U.S. Senate in 2026?
Jake Lang thinks so.
The soon to be 30-year-old native New Yorker was one of the more than 1,500 people charged with offenses related to the attack on the Capitol who received pardons from President Donald Trump earlier this year, and he’s filed paperwork to challenge Moody next year.
“Electing a January Sixer to go back to the Capitol and represent we the people and the constitutional conservatives and a real 1776 patriot is more than just about individual campaign issues,” said Lang, who lives in West Palm Beach, in a phone interview with the Phoenix earlier this week.
“It’s really about a hallmark moment in American history where the old era of Mitch McConnell, uniparty, RINO Republicanism in the Senate is over, and Florida, the most MAGA state in the country, sends a young firebrand to Washington.”
Edward Jacob Lang, then living in Newburgh, New York, was arrested on Jan. 16, 2021, and indicted on Jan. 29, 2021. He sat in jail for nearly four years awaiting trial on an 11-count indictment for his actions at the Capitol, including charges of assaulting law enforcement with a deadly weapon and engaging in physical violence on restricted grounds.
Those charges evaporated upon Trump’s mass pardon on Jan. 20, just hours after he was inaugurated as the country’s 47th president.
“Jan. 6 was the day when free men stood against tyranny,” Lang said in response to the federal charges filed against him.
“We peacefully protested. We exercised our God-given right to redress a grievance with our government. A stolen election. A fraudulent and rigged election. And we were out there praying in the name of our Lord, Jesus Christ, and singing hymns and waving our American flags and the unspeakable occurred.”
The “unspeakable,” he asserted, was that law enforcement “unleashed an attack” on those who came out “peacefully” petitioning their government, replete with pepper ball bullets, tear gas, concussion grenades, and flash bangs.
“They basically took what was kindling and threw a match on it and they blamed Jan. 6 and created some sort of false narrative that it was an insurrection. Nobody believed that,” he maintained.
“Nobody showed up armed, and after many years of maintaining my integrity and refusing to crumble, even though I spent 900 days in solitary confinement, I never took a plea deal,” Lang said — claiming that he saved two lives in the ugly melee that unfolded outside the Capitol (one of those individuals, Phillip Anderson, publicly thanked him on X after he also was released in January).
Attacks on officers
The feds took a different perspective. His indictment includes detailed descriptions of how Lang “repeatedly, and strategically, attacked the officers guarding the Capitol with that bat.”
The indictment goes on to read: “Specifically, he can be seen striking the officers with the bat at the following times: 4:54.58 p.m.; 4:56.30 p.m.; 4:56.44 p.m.; 4:57.13 p.m.; 4:57.15 p.m.; 4:57.21 p.m.; 4:57.26 p.m.; 4:57.32 p.m.; 4:58.06 p.m.; 4:58.29 p.m.; 4:59.10 p.m.; 4:59.32 p.m.; 4:59.49 p.m.; 4:59.51 p.m.; 4:59.54 p.m.; and 4:59.58 p.m.”
The U.S. Attorney’s Office argued against releasing Lang because of his involvement in establishing a paramilitary group in the days after Jan. 6.
He also has created a legal defense fund for “J6ers” that he claims he directed from his prison cell. The Phoenix was able to locate three separate websites Lang is connected to that have been collecting funds for Jan. 6 participants; one purports to have raised nearly $600,000; another claims to have raised nearly $200,000; and a third says that it has raised more than $241,000).
“My team and I are basically the figureheads of the Jan 6 movement,” he said. “We’ve gotten lawyers for over 50 Jan 6ers and it was those lawyers and our team of professionals that basically have been liaising with President Trump’s team, giving them all of the evidence that they needed, that even people like myself that were charged with violence are not guilty because it was in a self-defense posture and so we were very involved working night and day with people very close to Trump.”
DeSantis-Trump 2?
When asked specifically if he thought he has a chance against Moody, the twice-elected Florida attorney general appointed by Gov. Ron DeSantis in January to replace Marco Rubio in the Senate, Lang said he believes Moody isn’t that well known outside of political circles. He referred to a University of North Florida survey published last month that showed that a majority of voters had never heard of her.
He referred to a potential race against her as “round two” of the DeSantis-Trump GOP presidential primary of 2023-2024.
“There is the DeSantis camp, which is the RINO establishment uniparty, which is what everyone recognizes his 2024 presidential bid was a betrayal of President Trump and the Make America Great movement. And so, Ashley Moody represents the old school Ron DeSantis/Jeb Bush/Paul Ryan/Mitch McConnell wing of the Republican Party,” he said.
He added that his interviews on his “Political Prisoner Podcast” from his jail cell with MAGA luminaries such as retired Lt. Gen. Michael Flynn, former CBS-turned conservative reporter Laura Logan, and conservative gadfly Laura Loomer show that he has “MAGA patriots” solidly behind him.
The Moody campaign declined to respond to Lang’s comments.
Aubrey Jewett is a professor of political science at the University of Central Florida. He’s skeptical that Lang will gain much traction in the Republican primary — especially in trying to convince voters that Moody, who long has proclaimed her ardor for Trump — is not a MAGA Republican.
“In the pre-Donald Trump political era, someone who had been convicted of rioting in the Capitol and attacking police officers would in no way ever be considered a serious candidate for Congress by either party but especially Republicans, who are always claiming that law-and-order mantle in support of the police,” Jewett said. “But here we are.”
With so much activity taking place in the first six weeks of the Trump administration, some might forget the outright shock felt by many when Trump pardoned nearly every person convicted of offenses for Jan. 6. Just a week before, Vice-President J.D. Vance had said, “If you committed violence on that day, obviously you shouldn’t be pardoned.”
Jacksonville-area Republican U.S. Rep. John Rutherford, who previously served as Duval County sheriff, told Roll Call before the mass release of Jan. 6 rioters that he did not support releasing those who had been violent with law enforcement.
“I’m certainly not for an across-the-board pardon of everybody, because there’s some violent felons in there,” Rutherford told the website. “I’m a 41-year police officer. You attack a police officer, I want your ass going to jail.”
Jake Hoffman, executive director of the Tampa Bay Young Republicans, doesn’t take Lang seriously.
“Every cycle, both parties have insane candidates with a less than 0% chance of winning enter a race, but they do it anyway. This is one of those cases,” he told the Phoenix.
Lake County Commissioner and former GOP state Rep. Anthony Sabatini represented Lang legally for four months but told the Phoenix that he is not involved with his campaign.
Lang would not be the first individual involved with Jan. 6 to run for office in Florida, if in fact he sticks it out through next year.
In 2022, Jeremy Brown, a self-described Oath Keepers member and lauded 20-year U.S. Army Special Forces soldier who was sentenced to more than seven years in federal prison on weapons charges related to an investigation into his alleged involvement in the Jan. 6 riot, lost a race for state House in District 62 in the Tampa Bay Area against Democrat Michele Rayner. Brown ran his campaign from jail, an obstacle that Lang would not have to encounter.
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