Three years after Jan. 6 riot, NY man charged with beating cops still awaits trial in jail

It was Day 1,070 behind bars for Jake Lang as he waded into the latest in a tumble of interviews.

Charged with a marathon of violence against police at the U.S. Capitol three years ago, the 28-year-old New Yorker placed the call on a computer tablet in his Washington, D.C. jail cell. The tablet is his constant conduit to conservative media, supporters and his lawyers, and his tool for the podcasts and other ventures he runs from jail with the help of paid assistants on the outside.

Lang, known in court papers as Edward Jacob Lang, speaks in long streams, proclaiming his innocence in spite of a mountain of video recordings that allegedly show every punch and kick he delivered, every swing of his baseball bat.

“I don’t regret anything about that day, or going to the Capitol," Lang told the USA Today Network in an hour-long call last month. "There is a certain pattern to life, there is a certain plan that God has for each one of his children. He can make graves into gardens and use my incarceration and the Jan. Sixers’ persecution to awake tens of millions of people to the real life implications of what tyranny looks like in a modern day society."

Three years after the Jan. 6 assault on the Capitol by a mob of Donald Trump supporters, Lang holds a distinction among the relatively small pool of defendants who have been held in jail while awaiting trial or a plea deal — out of more than 1,200 charged in connection with the riot.

Most suspects have been released to await their day in court. But for those denied bail due to the severity of their charges, none has spent as long in jail without a trial as Lang.

Lang, a Sullivan County native who was arrested at his apartment in Newburgh 10 days after the melee in Washington, initially was set to stand trial last January, two years after his arrest. But his trial date got moved twice last year, first to May and then to October, before being put on hold again because of a pending Supreme Court appeal that could lead to the elimination of one of his 13 charges.

Waiting for that case to play out necessitated another delay. So Lang's trial is now set to start on Sept. 9 of this year — three years and nine months after his arrest, and shortly before the next presidential election, as he ruefully points out.

“It’s very likely I’ll spend the entire term, the entire tenure of Joe Biden’s presidency without a trial,” he said, shifting in mid-sentence to discount the prospect of a second Biden victory over Trump, the likely Republican nominee.

Why is he in jail?

Out of more than 350 Jan. 6 cases still pending after hundreds of convictions and guilty pleas, only 14 suspects were in custody because of charges related to the Capitol riot as of Dec. 12, according to a list of pretrial detainees that the Department of Justice provided to the USA Today Network.

Just a few have been held anywhere near as long as Lang, and some are nearing the end of their cases. Andrew Taake, in jail since July 2021, pleaded guilty in December and awaits sentencing. Ryan Samsel, arrested two weeks after Lang, started his trial in October. Jeremy Brown, a former Green Beret who has been held since September 2021, was convicted of some charges last April but awaits trial on others.

Lang is accused of battling police for more than two hours near a Capitol entrance where some of the most intense and extended violence took place that day. According to a detailed account by prosecutors in court papers, he repeatedly punched and kicked officers who were trying to keep the mob out of the Capitol, before finally beating some with a baseball bat. He allegedly stopped only after he was shot in the foot with a rubber bullet.

Carl Nichols, the federal judge hearing Lang's case in Washington, explained at length why he refused to release Lang on bail at a court appearance in September 2021, nine months after Lang's arrest.

Nichols cited the two-hour duration of Lang's alleged combat with police; his lack of remorse as he bragged about his activities on social media; and the strength of the evidence against him in video recordings and his social media posts.

But the judge also gave another reason to keep Lang in jail: alarming comments that he allegedly made on social media after the riot about "getting a f---ing arsenal together" for Biden's inauguration and waging war against the government.

"I think these messages — which, again, happened after January 6th — they were not in the heat of the moment, and they reflect at least a risk that in the future Mr. Lang would, as the government put it, be at risk of committing or advocating violence in favor of his political beliefs," Nichols said, according to a transcript of the hearing.

What does he say in his defense?

Lang argues he acted in response to violence that police initiated.

"That tunnel was brutal, brutal in many ways," he told the judge during the same hearing in September 2021, referring to an enclosed area where a scrum of protesters fought police. "The first ten minutes I was in that tunnel, I had my camera up and hands down, just filming, being peaceful. Then I started witnessing disgusting police brutality, and things moved on from there."

He also invokes in his defense his efforts to save Roseanne Boyland, a Trump supporter who was crushed to death in the crowd, and his rescue of another trampled protester named Philip Anderson, who credits Lang with pulling him to safety and preventing him from dying the same way as Boyland.

“All my interactions with the police were justified that day, for multiple reasons," Lang said in the USA Today Network interview. "The chiefest among them: every man and woman has the right to defend themselves from bodily injury, and I was defending myself. And also, you have the right to defend other people.”

Online clues: Sullivan County native charged with role in Capitol riot left a trail of evidence online

Lang also claimed he was defending the nation against tyranny, and dismissed the authority of the police officers guarding the Capitol, about 140 of whom reportedly were injured in the mayhem on Jan. 6.

“I wouldn’t even consider them police," he said. "I would consider them oath breakers that were defending a communist coup d’etat happening inside the Capitol building: the installment of Joe Biden in a stolen election as a puppet regime leader, a communist bought and paid for by China.”

What are his jail conditions?

Lang has pent much of incarceration in the Washington, D.C. jail, although he says he also has been shuttled to jails and prisons in New York City, Pennsylvania, West Virginia, Virginia and Oklahoma during his three years in custody.

He says he's currently confined alone for 20 hours each day, and uses his four daily hours outside his cell to do exercises and watch TV. He describes his isolation as punitive, saying, "They’re trying to stifle me and throw me off, torture me into a plea deal.”

The jail charges him $3 an hour for the use of his tablet, and $2 per phone call, Lang said. He uses it to record two podcasts, one celebrating the Jan. 6 cause and the other religiously oriented, and conduct a steady stream of interviews, including recent ones with conservative commentators Charlie Kirk and Lou Dobbs. He says he's done "hundreds and hundreds" in all.

Detailed case: Capitol riot suspect from Newburgh allegedly beat cops with fists, feet, bat and shield

From his cell, he also collects donations online to pay legal bills of Jan. 6 defendants and support those who are in jail or serving prison terms for convictions. He said one fund hauls in $20,000 to $30,000 a month for the commissary accounts of those inmates, distributed to 60 prisons around the U.S. at $100 per month for each inmate.

"And we're expanding that for Christmas gifts this year," he said.

He gets plenty of help from outside the jail. Lang said he has four full-time staff members, whose salaries are paid by his father, and a network of unpaid supporters: “a lot of great Christians, conservative patriots in our prayer groups and in our volunteer groups that do a lot of hard work for us.”

How does he expect his trial to go?

Some Jan. 6 defendants have expressed remorse in court for what they did that day, or repudiated Trump's fable about a stolen election that fueled their actions that day.

Lang does neither. He insists evidence is gradually being uncovered by conservative media outlets and Republican House members that shows police acted improperly and that violence was instigated by federal agents in the crowd, not Trump supporters.

In that sense, his long trial wait has worked in his favor, he argues: it has allowed more "exculpatory" evidence to emerge and strengthen his defense. When his trial finally comes, he has asked the judge to let him deliver his own opening and closing statements instead of his lawyers, and to cross-examine witnesses when he chooses.

He vows to win.

"I do not believe I am guilty of anything," he said. "I think that the Founding Fathers and our Constitution are very clear about the actions that we took on Jan. 6, and the peaceful intentions that we had, and the attack that we suffered at the hands of our own government."

But he also contradicted his own prediction with a dose of pessimism, saying Washington juries are biased against Jan. 6 defendants and have a "100% conviction rate" in their cases (two suspects have been fully acquitted, according to a New York Times breakdown on Thursday).

MAGA mogul: NY Capitol riot suspect records podcast, manages TV network from jail cell in D.C.

That leaves another potential rescue.

Asked if he hopes for a presidential pardon if he's convicted and Trump is re-elected in November, Lang paused before asking, with incredulity: “Does a bear go to the woods to go to the bathroom?"

"I mean, come on, of course," he said. "My hope does not singularly rest in Donald Trump, even though I do like him and support him very much. My hope singularly rests in God. God can use Trump as an instrument to vindicate us.”

Chris McKenna covers government and politics for The Journal News and USA Today Network. Reach him at cmckenna@gannett.com.

This article originally appeared on Rockland/Westchester Journal News: Capitol riot: Jake Lang of NY, accused cop beater, still awaits trial