Pardoned Jan. 6 rioter from Washington state has a new passion — reforming the justice system

A Kingston, Washington, man is home from prison after participating in the Jan. 6 riot at the U.S. Capitol. He says his time behind bars woke him up to a whole other world.

In December 2020, Taylor Johnatakis learned about a protest coming up in Washington, D.C. – he learned about it on Truth Social, from President Donald Trump himself.

As a news junky who studied political science and hosts a podcast, Johnatakis was intrigued. Plus, the rally was in support of Donald Trump, and he had never been to a Trump rally before, and thought this could be the last one.

Johnatakis and his brother-in-law flew to D.C., Johnatakis with a bullhorn he’d bought at Goodwill. At the rally, he quoted Thomas Paine in some chants, a darling of the modern day conservative movement. As they made their way to the Capitol, they were packed like sardines alongside other protesters, and Johnatakis felt swept up in the moment, oblivious, he said, that mayhem was about to erupt, officers attacked and killed. 

"What's the worst thing they're gonna do? Give me, like, a ticket or a fine?” Johnatakis said. “That's really the world I was kind of operating in."

At one point, he lifted up a bike rack, which prosecutors would later call a weapon. Ultimately, police kicked him out, and he returned to his hotel, where he saw the mayhem of the day described on television. He was in shock.

Johnatakis’s account mirrors what federal prosecutors would say about him in records. That he had a bullhorn, a podcast that supported Donald Trump, that he held onto a bike rack, which they deemed a weapon.

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Johnatakis returned to Kingston and soon got a call from the FBI. 

"Next thing you know, I've got three felonies and five misdemeanors,” he said. 

Sitting at his large, wooden dining room table in Kingston, Johnatakis remembered wanting to see Trump in-person for the first time. 

"It's once in a generation you get a Theodore Roosevelt or a Donald Trump,” he said. “Just to see a president in general, but let alone one that is as exciting as Donald Trump. No matter what side of the political spectrum you're on, that guy is just his force of nature."

What he recalls that day is people crowding the Capitol grounds. Johnatakis said he never saw broken windows or any real violence. 

"I didn't see what had happened on January 6 ‘til I got to the hotel room and saw it on TV and my jaw was just on the floor,” he said. “I was like, ‘That happened? I was there?’”

RELATED: DOJ says will not fire FBI agents who acted in 'ethical' way over Jan. 6 cases

A federal judge and jury decided that Johnatakis was more than just there that day. 

That bullhorn got him into trouble. Charging documents say Johnatakis led rioters toward the Capitol and urged them forward.

There's no evidence that he went into the building, but there is video of him holding a bike rack with others. The feds say he was pushing it up. Johnatakis claims he was pulling it down to keep it in place. 

Prosecutors also found some tweets and remarks he made on his podcast, which are inconsistent with his account that he had no idea trouble was on the horizon.

"So, I said something like, 'If the politicians would come outside, we would have killed them,”' he said. “I didn't mean I would have killed them. There were some angry people that day, right? Like, there's no doubt about it, and so that I should have just said, ‘They would have killed them.’ And I would probably would have been fine." 

Looking back now, Johnatakis says he got caught up in the moment surrounded by hundreds of people, feeling that energy.

But a lot of people argue that Johnatakis should have seen what was going on around him and left the Capitol. 

"Obviously peaceful protest is a fundamental American, right? But they don't have the right to obstruct the peaceful transfer of power,” said University of Tulsa historian Kristen Oertel.

Johnatakis says he felt he was at a protest, not a violent overthrow of the government. 

Oertel, and other legal observers, say protest and civil disobedience cross the line when people get violent, as happened on Jan. 6. Dozens of police officers were beaten and pepper sprayed by rioters.

"They were protesting the electoral process that had legally and fairly played out across the country,” Oertel said. 

Johnatakis reiterates that he isn't one of those J-6ers who says it was perfectly peaceful, and he does acknowledge that there were bad people at Jan. 6. 

"I never, ever faulted the government for wanting to go after people who committed violence or broke windows. That made perfect sense to me,” he said. "If the government had stopped at 50 or 100 people, that would have been a non-issue, but they just had no emergency brakes."

RELATED: Criminal records of Jan. 6 rioters pardoned by Trump include rape, domestic violence

He’s since wondered where civil rights groups like the ACLU were to stand up for some Jan. 6 participants’ right to free speech. 

Prosecutors wanted to put Johnatakis away for nine years. He was sentenced to seven. In just a few months he was transferred to three prisons and spent time in solitary confinement and multiple lockdowns. 

"I saw a race riot, saw blood, saw fights, saw drugs. That was wild,” he said. “I remember thinking like, half these people need rehab. They don't need prison."

Prison changed Johnatakis. He talks almost nonstop about mass incarceration and the need for parole boards. His wife started a nonprofit to help children whose parents are in prison. It's personal for them: they have five kids.

Johnatakis spent 14 months in prison before Trump pardoned him last month. 

He says he still loves Trump, his own Teddy Roosevelt.

But after time in prison, he sees his country as one that locks up too many people, something he says deprives them of their humanity.

"And when you deprive them of humanity, there is a real sense when you're inside that everybody on the outside hates you, and so why not hate them?"  Johnatakis said.