Interrogated, abused & tortured J6 prisoner released just 5 days ago tells his harrowing story of jail time: 'Like a scene out of a movie'



If you haven’t heard the name John Strand, here is a brief recap of his story:

Strand attended the Capitol on January 6 as the friend and bodyguard of Dr. Simone Gold, who was scheduled — and legally permitted — to speak on Capitol grounds that day. However, when the Oathkeepers and Strand escorted Dr. Gold to her speaking location, the chaos at the Capitol had already begun.

While Strand and Gold were uninvolved in the breaching of the Capitol building and never once participated in violence, they made the mistake of entering the building along with the crowd. They entered and departed peacefully like so many thousands of others, but this was enough to land both of them in hot water with the DOJ.

Both Stand and Gold were some of the first to be arrested and charged with four misdemeanors as well as the 1512 felony. While Gold took a plea deal, involving 60 days in prison, Strand, outraged by the obvious injustice, fought the charges. For his resistance, he was convicted on all charges and sentenced to 32 months in prison.

However, now that 1512 has been overturned by SCOTUS, Strand has been freed.

Just days out of prison, he joins Jill Savage and the “Blaze News Tonight” panel to recount his grueling experience behind bars.

"I was in HELL" - J6 Prisoner Gives FIRST Interview Post-Releasewww.youtube.com

For Strand, jail was “a very painful, miserable place.”

“God did a lot of great things, but it was terrible,” he tells Jill.

“My time in prison was actually split between two facilities — the first half in Miami, where I was actually viciously abused in an isolation environment for about four straight months, which was essentially like being waterboarded, and when I was released from there and transferred to another location, where it was a little less oppressive, it felt like I was trying to breathe the oxygen of freedom through a straw from underneath the swamp,” he recounts.

“You were being held in solitary confinement, which is essentially torture,” says investigative journalist and Blaze Media correspondent Steve Baker, adding that when Dr. Gold tried to sound the alarm on Strand’s abusive treatment, “There was a problem getting this message out” because “they tend to punish you more.”

“That’s exactly what happened to me,” Strand confirms. “They fabricated a whole series of ridiculous circumstances to put me in isolation for a couple of weeks basically to say, ‘Watch out, we'll crush you if you look sideways.”’

“They pulled me out for a couple days and then a story that I had nothing to do with went viral on media. Congressman Marjorie Taylor Greene reported on me being tortured and abused, and they put me in this interrogation room and grilled me about this, like I had something to do with it — like a scene out of a movie. And then they threw me back in, and I wasn't seen again for three and a half months.”

“How did you mentally make it through that time?” asks Jill.

To hear Strand’s answer, watch the clip above.

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Reversal of FATE: Steve Baker’s update on January 6 prisoners is ‘a good sign’



January 6 started as a chance for Trump supporters to innocently protest and quickly turned into a day that would change their lives forever.

Now, however, things might be taking a turn for the better.

“One J-sixer is seeing a reversal of fate,” Jill Savage of “Blaze New Tonight” explains.

“John Strand is actually one of the more, let’s call it, infamous stories, certainly one of the more high-profile cases of all the January 6 defendants,” Steve Baker tells Savage.

Strand was friend and bodyguard of Simone Gold — a doctor and attorney who was the deplatformed founder of the Frontline American Doctors. Gold had been accused of “disinformation” for recommending alternative therapies that were not part of what Baker calls the “approved narrative” regarding COVID-19.

Gold was scheduled to speak on January 6 at one of the six legally permitted events scheduled on the Capitol property that day.

“By the time they got to the Capitol, everything had gone to hell in a handbasket, and so there was nothing but chaos by the time they arrived. The breaches had already taken place. John Strand and Simone Gold did not participate in violence, they did not participate in breaching the Capitol building whatsoever,” Baker explains.

However, their fatal flaw was going inside the Capitol peacefully.

“She actually decided to deliver her prepared remarks there in the Rotunda. She climbed up on the Eisenhower statue, with John standing guard beside her, she delivered her remarks there in the great Rotunda of the Capitol, and then they peacefully left, just as so many other hundreds and thousands of people did,” Baker says.

Both Strand and Gold were “handed that infamous 1512 obstruction of an official proceeding felony.”

The felony carried up to 20 years of imprisonment.

Gold ended up taking a plea deal and pled down to a single misdemeanor. Judge Christopher Cooper sentenced her to 60 days in prison.

“John Strand decided he was not going to take this lying down, that he was going to be a warrior, and he, despite the odds being horribly stacked against him, he was going to go to trial and he did that,” Baker explains.

He was convicted on all counts, and he was sentenced to 32 months in prison.

“Now what’s happening is that because of the Supreme Court’s overturning the 1512 obstruction of an official proceeding charge against 355 defendants, him being one of those,” Baker says, “they’re shortening their sentences or letting them go.”

If they haven’t gone to trial yet, they’re not charging them with it.

“It’s especially a good sign because the Department of Justice has already announced that they want to figure out how to continue with that charge,” Baker explains. “But the point being, is it appears that the judges are pushing back against the DOJ.”

“We’ll take this as a good sign,” he adds.


Federal judge orders release of John Strand from Jan. 6 prison term



John Herbert Strand, a former model and actor who went to the U.S. Capitol on Jan. 6 to protect Dr. Simone Gold of America’s Frontline Doctors, was ordered released from prison July 15 in the wake of the U.S. Supreme Court decision stymieing use of a 20-year felony obstruction charge.

United States District Judge Christopher Cooper granted Strand’s second motion for release since February — just weeks after a Supreme Court ruling strictly limited the obstruction of an official proceeding charge leveled against Strand and 354 other Jan. 6 defendants.

Gold, Strand’s friend who served a 60-day prison sentence on a misdemeanor count of entering and remaining in a restricted building or grounds, praised Strand’s integrity after learning of the release order.

'Who is the God that shall deliver you out of my hand?'

“He was offered a single misdemeanor plea,” Gold said in an interview with Blaze News. “He said, ‘I'm going to walk into the fire.’ He walked into the fire. He never regretted it. I mean, he’s a full-on hero in an age when we need heroes.”

Strand, 41, of Naples, Fla., will have to finish his 12-month sentence on four Jan. 6 misdemeanor charges, which puts his release date on July 24. Strand was originally sentenced to 32 months in prison.

Strand might come to see his release in the light of the miracle of three Old Testament figures who inspired him during his long Jan. 6 ordeal, Gold said.

Strand loves the story of Shadrach, Meshach, and Abednego as told in chapter 3 of the prophecy of Daniel, she said.

The book of Daniel recounts how the three men were bound tightly and thrown into a roaring furnace after they refused to worship a giant golden idol commissioned by Babylonian King Nabuchodonosor (often spelled Nebuchadnezzar).

“Who is the God that shall deliver you out of my hand?” the king asked.

The flames, however, did not consume Shadrach, Meshach, and Abednego. An angel drove the fire out “and made the midst of the furnace like the blowing of a wind bringing dew, and the fire touched them not,” Daniel wrote.

John Strand records a speech by Dr. Simone Gold in Statuary Hall at the U.S. Capitol. Strand worked as Gold's bodyguard on Jan. 6, 2021.(CCTV/U.S. Capitol Police)

“And they walked in the midst of the flame, praising God and blessing the Lord.”

After a year in federal prison, Strand will walk out of the Federal Correctional Institution in Oakdale, La. — one of three lockups that have been his personal crucible since July 25, 2023.

During his year in custody, Strand spent some four months in solitary confinement, according to Gold. He never wavered in his belief that going to trial was the right decision.

Strand has said he resisted the pressure to take a plea deal rather than capitulate to what he considered unjust charges.

A federal District of Columbia jury found Strand guilty of all five charges against him on Sept. 27, 2022 — including the 20-year felony obstruction count.

Gold had been scheduled to speak about medical freedom and COVID-19 at a permitted event on Capitol grounds on Jan. 6. The massive crowds that swarmed the Capitol after then-President Donald J. Trump’s speech at the Ellipse canceled the event.

After entering the Capitol, Gold and Strand made their way to Statuary Hall, where Gold attempted to give her medical-freedom speech. After police pushed the crowd out just before 3 p.m., Gold and Strand moved to the Great Rotunda. She stood on the platform of a statue of Gen. Dwight D. Eisenhower and gave her speech through a bullhorn.

'I think the world needs heroes. We've got one.'

Left-wing publications including Rolling Stone and others mocked Strand’s decision to go to trial and celebrated his conviction, calling him a “model-turned-Covid-19 conspiracy theorist" and an "underwear model turned insurrectionist."

“If there is anything that this case can teach us, it’s that a male model’s life is a precious, precious commodity,” Rolling Stone wrote in September 2022. “Just because they have chiseled abs and stunning features, it doesn’t mean that they, too, can’t go to jail."

On June 1, 2023, Cooper sentenced Strand to 32 months in prison and 36 months of supervised release and ordered him to pay $12,170 in restitution and fines.

Gold said she hopes Strand will go into public life after his release.

"I'm going to encourage John to run for office,” she said. “I think the world needs heroes. We've got one. The world needs men who stand up. Men who walk into the fight.”

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