On Oct. 12, Jake Lang passed a milestone: 1,000 days in jail without a trial. To mark the anniversary, he wanted to share with the American people “the horrific conditions of confinement,” which he says he and many of his fellow Jan. 6 prisoners have had to endure.
“During this time, I’ve done 20 months of solitary confinement,” Mr. Lang told The Epoch Times. “For 15 months of that, I wasn’t allowed to have a haircut or a shave.”
This was intentional, he said, to make Jan. 6 prisoners look like “homeless vagrants” or “deranged terrorists” during video court appearances.
Jan. 6 prisoners are frequently denied family visitation, Mr. Lang said. They spend months with no sunlight. Lights in their cells remain on at night, depriving them of sleep.
Troublesome prisoners are subjected to “diesel therapy,” where inmates are shackled together—frequently with violent gang members—for long bus or plane rides to another facility. The trips can take hours, days, or weeks. Fights are frequent. Personal belongings and discovery for their trials—family photos, exculpatory documents, and notes related to their cases—are often lost.
Family members lose track of them.
Following his arrest on Jan. 16, 2021, Mr. Lang has been shuttled from one prison to another. In New York, he was moved to three different facilities, including the MDC Brooklyn where Jeffrey Epstein was held.
Then he was taken to an airport in Newburgh, New York, put on a plane with about 200 convicted felons, and transported to Oklahoma, he said.
He was moved to Northern Neck Regional in Warsaw, Virginia, and then to the DC Jail, known to Jan. 6 prisoners as “The Gulag.”
Confined to his cell for 23 hours and 15 minutes each day for three months, he was frequently physically assaulted. The first time was on Sept. 18, 2021, before a rally in the DC mall in support of Jan. 6 prisoners.
About 6 a.m., he said “around 70 officers began banging on the cell doors” of Jan. 6 inmates, ordering them to get dressed and grab their mats. They were being moved to “a more secure location,” they were told.
Guards were shouting. Inmates were confused and scared.
“Some thought we were being taken outside to a firing squad,” he said. “They thought they were going to kill us.”
To ease their fear, he began singing the national anthem.
A guard threw him against the wall and punched him in the ribs.
They were all taken to the basement and placed in cells with no windows, no sinks, or toilets.
The ordeal lasted eight hours.
Mr. Lang was then “tossed in the hole.”
“It’s disgusting down there,” he said. “The walls are wet. There’s vermin and cockroaches, and there’s a little slot in the door that they feed you through like a dog.”
About 10 months later, Mr. Lang was brought back up to the pod—an independent section within the facility that holds a small number of prisoners. His fellow Jan. 6 prisoners gathered at his cell door to greet him.
“One of the guards yelled for them to get away from my door, just arbitrarily enforcing a rule that didn’t exist,” he explained. “He called the sergeant, who opened the door and unloaded a whole can of military-grade pepper spray directly into my eyes.”
Naked and in cuffs, an emergency response team dragged him from the cell and brought him to a shower. Female guards watched, “laughing hysterically” at his pain.
He wasn’t given soap, so the oil ran down his body to his groin where the burning became excruciating. In his cell, the burning oil transferred to his mattress. He woke from nightmares thinking he was on fire.
When he was thrown back in “the hole,” he went on a 12-day hunger strike that cost him 30 pounds.
Negotiations for ending his hunger strike included a haircut, family visitation, and a Congressional investigation into the deaths of Ashli Babbitt and Rosanne Boyland.
He was then moved to Alexandria Regional Jail and placed in solitary.
After reporting his treatment to the press, he was sent to a federal penitentiary in Lewisburg, Pennsylvania.
After more press interviews, he was moved to Rappahannock Regional Jail in Stafford, Virginia.
One month and multiple interviews later, he was back at Northern Neck. A week later he was once again at Lewisburg, and then landed back at the DC jail, where he has been for the past six months.
“Friday, October 13th marked my 1,000th day in prison. But God’s grace has supplied me and the rest of the January 6 prisoners with strength, endurance, perseverance, and hope, knowing that we will have vindication from this political persecution. One day, from all over the country, more than 200 of us will emerge from these prisons and gulags. We will be redeemed and restored and all of the things they’ve done to us will all be washed away.”
