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By Paul Bond
Chief Correspondent, Culture
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When Adam Johnson first heard the media describe him as an "insurrectionist," he wasn't sure he understood the correct meaning of the word. After Googling it, he said to himself: "Oh. That's bad."
This was shortly after he entered the U.S. Capitol on January 6, 2021, and was photographed with then-House Speaker Nancy Pelosi's lectern, thus becoming one of the poster children for an event some have likened to Pearl Harbor or the terrorist attacks of 9/11.
Johnson has spent a few years being publicly contrite about his participation in the siege on the Capitol and cooperating with authorities, but not speaking much to the mainstream media that has largely dubbed him an insurrectionist who disrupted the peaceful transfer of power from former President Donald Trump to President Joe Biden.
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Eighteen months removed from prison, Johnson speaks of an "obligation" to talk about the nonviolent defendants who are still incarcerated, or back home with their lives in tatters.
When he agreed to an hourlong phone interview with Newsweek less than two months ahead of the riot's third anniversary, he sought assurance that he was allowed to record it to ensure he was quoted properly and in context.
Contrite Yet 'Flippant'
While apologetic for his behavior that day—"I did a lot of sword-falling," he says—he acknowledges that he was also initially "flippant" about it, and that he remains so to this day, due to what he says is the "absurd level of hate" that has been directed toward him.
He says he has a stack of handwritten letters from people "saying they're going to rape and murder my family," which includes five sons, ages 8 to 16, and his wife, a physician, and he showed several of those letters to Newsweek.
That flippant attitude began with a photo of him smiling as he carried Pelosi's lectern across the Capitol Rotunda and later texted a friend that the photo was shared so much online that he "broke the internet."
Then, before heading to federal prison for 71 consecutive days, he posted an April Fool's joke that he was throwing a going-to-prison party at a restaurant near his home in Parrish, Florida, an event the media played up even after the restaurant denied anything had been booked. A less-publicly advertised party was thrown for him at a local pub.
Even his handle on X, formerly Twitter, is flippant: "LecternLeader," which he says is "meant to be a mockery. The whole thing is silly and overblown, the way they talked about me."
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Johnson describes his politics as "anti-war and anti-establishment." He leans libertarian and didn't bother to vote in 2016, but voted for Trump in 2020 because he promised to secure the southern border and to end what Trump called a war on domestic energy production.
His Facebook and Instagram accounts were largely dedicated to his family life, he says, though media "cherry-picked" a few political posts to frame him as "alt right." Instagram and Facebook threw him off those platforms within 24 hours of Johnson turning himself in to authorities. The social-media giants wouldn't say why, though he presumes it was because he had posted video of January 6.
How Johnson Ended Up With the Lectern
Johnson had never attended a Trump rally or been to Washington, D.C., before, so he decided he'd kill two birds with one stone and flew to the nation's capital to hear what Trump had to say after losing the election to Biden.
He was near the Washington Monument when Trump said, "I know that everyone here will soon be marching over to the Capitol building to peacefully and patriotically make your voices heard," thus figured he'd go with the flow.
Once there, he heard rioters yelling at police, "You're betraying our country" and "you're oath-breakers," while cops shouted to stay back, then used tear gas.
Johnson said he wanted nothing to do with that group of rioters, so he wandered around for 10 minutes until he saw others walking into an open door. "I thought that's where the protest was going," he said. "I was under the impression that you were allowed to protest at the Capitol. I've seen it happen so often over the past 10 years."
Once inside, he said, he broke from the pack and was roaming around alone for awhile.
"I was never ordered by police to not enter the building," he said. "I was lost in the building and asked a police officer for directions to leave. He gave them to me, I thanked him and told him to stay safe."
But prior to exiting, he got the notion to attempt to meet Pelosi, talk to her, maybe take a selfie, so he jiggled the handle of her locked door, then headed back to the Rotunda, which is when he saw an unattended "podium."
Johnson, 37, said he had no idea it was Pelosi's lectern and, when he saw news cameras pointed in his direction, he decided to grab it, then he smiled and winked at the photographers.
"I thought it would make a great picture, so I carried it 20 yards to the center of the room, gave a short speech and left it there." His speech, he said, consisted of him railing against traitors and treason and his idea that budget items ought to be voted on separately.
Charges, a Plea and Punishment
While he says prosecutors initially floated the idea that he faced 20 years in prison for insurrection, Johnson was ultimately charged with felony theft, violent entry and entering and remaining in a restricted building.
Charges came the following Friday when he was back in Florida and he turned himself in, spending the next two days, he says, in solitary confinement in a concrete cell. He says he was supposed to get an hour of recreation, a shower, a toothbrush, none of which happened. He was released on cashless bond.
But he never took the lectern out of the Capitol and video emerged of him nonviolently walking through the open Capitol door (Newsweek reviewed the video), thus the first two charges were dropped and he pleaded guilty to the third. He was given a $5,000 fine, 200 hours of community service and sentenced to 75 days in prison, but was given credit for time he had already served.
He says he took the plea deal because his attorneys told him a trial in Washington would result in more charges and more time in prison.
At his sentencing, U.S. District Judge Reggie Walton said Johnson made a "mockery" of the attack on the Capitol by grabbing Pelosi's lectern, and added his behavior was reminiscent of a "banana republic" and that he contributed to a "dangerous slide in America." And Assistant U.S. Attorney Jessica Arco told the court that Johnson knew that he "was part of a mob," evidence being video of him trying to enter the locked door of what he believed was Pelosi's office.
Johnson spent his 71 days of prison time in a facility that is part of the Coleman Federal Correctional Complex in central Florida. He spent his first 18 days in isolation, this time with books and puzzles to keep him busy, because he wasn't vaccinated against COVID.
Once in the general population, another inmate handed him a bag containing food and other necessities—including a toothbrush.
He was surrounded mostly by nonviolent drug offenders that he described as "very nice," though he says the guards were "absolute bastards" who would arbitrarily confiscate the belongings of inmates under the guise that they had violated some rule.
The Federal Bureau of Prisons told Newsweek it would not comment on inmates by name and added that it is "committed to accommodating the needs of federal offenders and ensuring the safety and security of all individuals in our population, our employees, and the public."
Johnson said he was considered a "celebrity," as was one other inmate who was serving time for their participation in a college admissions scandal that ensnared some high-profile people in 2019, though Johnson was the only January 6 convict there during his time.
He said he eventually was "coerced" into being vaccinated under threat that he'd have to spend his final five days in isolation, this time in a facility for violent offenders, if he remained unvaccinated.
Given he was incarcerated during the COVID pandemic, the prison restricted the number of visitors to the facility, so he told his wife and children not to visit him because, he says, he didn't want to deprive other prisoners of their ability to see friends and family.
He says that, while he had the opportunity to work in a "labor camp" to take days off his sentence, he refused. "There was no way I was going to work for them. I shouldn't have even been there. It was a nonviolent misdemeanor and I was in a federal prison," he says.
Life After January 6
Johnson, a stay-at-home dad who's a semester away from a bachelor's degree in psychology, is writing a book that he hopes to publish in a few years, once a five-year moratorium on him profiting from being a January 6 convict expires.
His family and most acquaintances were and are supportive after his January 6 "mistake," though a few friends have cut him out of their lives in order to preserve their livelihoods, he says.
"I asked one, 'Do you really want to live in a world where you can't associate with anyone who has a different opinion?' They said they had to keep their job."
A woodworker, he also has been making miniature lecterns inscribed with, "Take a Stand." While it could be more evidence of him being flippant, he says his intention is to auction them off with proceeds going to the struggling families of nonviolent January 6 offenders—always careful to distinguish the violent from the nonviolent participants that day.
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"The violent offenders should be held accountable for their actions, but the sentencing we are seeing for their actions are not historically consistent with others who have committed the same crime. It's not justice," he claims.
Is There a Middle Ground Between 'Peaceful Protest' and 'Insurrection'?
The U.S. Justice Department describes January 6 as an "attack on the U.S. Capitol that disrupted a joint session of the U.S. Congress in the process of affirming the presidential election."
The agency said that damage to the Capitol and certain costs associated with the response of the U.S. Capitol Police that day resulted in a loss of $2.7 million for American taxpayers.
More than 950 defendants have been arrested, with more than 284 being charged with assaulting, resisting or impeding officers or employees. The agency has also posted video of violent offenders online in hopes of capturing those still at large, and the FBI is offering a $30,000 reward for one of them.
None, though, have been charged with insurrection, despite proclamations from media and some Democratic lawmakers depicting the riot in such terms, suggesting that there is a middle ground between taking part in a peaceful protest, on one end of the spectrum, and attempting to overthrow the U.S. government on the other end.
Perhaps that's the ground occupied by Johnson, considering that he freely admits his "mistake" in entering the Capitol—and that he says he told his children that he was obligated to accept the consequences of his actions—though he adds that his experience was also a lesson in hypocrisy and irony.
Not the least of those lessons involves former federal prosecutor Patrick Scruggs, who had considered Johnson dangerous and, according to Johnson, was responsible for putting him in an ankle bracelet and for confiscating his passport and firearms.
But two months ago, Scruggs was arrested in a road-rage incident in which he's charged with breaking a man's car window and stabbing him multiple times before threatening others with a knife. Unlike Johnson, who spent two days in a concrete cell when he turned himself in, Scruggs reportedly bonded out of custody in 10 hours.
A news report described Scruggs as someone who "helped on high-profile cases, including that of Adam Johnson, who stole the lectern from Nancy Pelosi's office during the Capitol insurrection."
But Johnson describes himself not as an insurrectionist —or a thief — but as "a tourist with bad timing," and he predicts that likening January 6, 2021, to December 7, 1941, and September 11, 2001, as Vice President Kamala Harris and many more have done, will not age well.
"For people who were there on 9/11, this diminishes it so grotesquely. Almost 3,000 people died that day. It's hyperbole," he said.
Addressing that lack of middle ground, he says some are calling January 6 participants some of the worst villains in U.S. history, while others have actually called them heroic.
"You have to choose a side, and both sides believe they are in the right," he laments. "It's become like this religious holiday that we're being forced to celebrate or mourn once a year."
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