“Give Me MyPillow Guy or Give Me Death,” Says Capitol Rioter on Way to Prison

Some people do crazy things for love. Others, like Capitol riot attendee Doug Jensen, risk jail time for MyPillow CEO Mike Lindell.

Jensen, a 42-year-old Des Moines man and one of 600+ people charged in the Jan. 6 Capitol insurrection, is being sent behind bars again on Thursday after he allegedly violated the terms of his pretrial release by using an iPhone to stream news from the right-wing-friendly video platform Rumble as well as a “cyber symposium” on voter fraud held by Lindell, who has become a leading voice in the “Stop the Steal” movement among the sad and deluded.

Here is a handy timeline of events related to Jensen’s term violation, courtesy of the Des Moines Register:

Jensen spent six months in jail after being caught on camera wearing a QAnon shirt and leading a mob after Capitol police officer Eugene Goodman during the insurrection. He was released in July after professing remorse in his bond motion, claiming that he had been “deceived” by QAnon, but had since come “full circle” and now recognized that he had bought into “a pack of lies.” His release was contingent upon certain conditions, including being prohibited from accessing the internet on any devices lest he fall down the conspiracy theory rabbit hole again. His wife also swore under oath that she would supervise Jensen and notify the Court if he violated any of the conditions.

But less than a month later, a pretrial services officer found Jensen “alone, in his garage, using a WiFi-connected phone to stream news from Rumble,” according to a motion to revoke Jensen’s pretrial release. Per the motion, Jensen first claimed that the phone belonged to his daughter, and then claimed that his wife just happened to leave the news on for him when she left for work that morning. Eventually, he admitted that he had spent two days the previous week watching Lindell’s conference.

“Orwellian aside, it was wrong, and he’s not denying that,” Jensen’s lawyer Chris Davis — who compared his client’s folly to the relapse of a drug addict — conceded during a Thursday hearing about whether Jensen should go back to jail, per the Daily Beast.

“This is an intelligent man … he is not a bumbling idiot, in any sense of the word,” Davis said of the man who risked it all to stream an event boasting such highlights as a special guest appearance from the son of Brazilian president Jair Bolsonaro and a conspiracy-ridden video collage about voter fraud paired with an image of Lindell hugging a pillow.