Iowa Insurrectionist may go Back to Jail Over Mike Lindell Video

AP Photo/Manuel Balce Ceneta

By Ty Rushing

August 20, 2021

Iowa’s most infamous Capitol insurrectionist may go back to jail because of Mike Lindell.

According to federal court documents, Doug Jensen of Des Moines violated his home-monitoring release, a condition of which prohibits the use of the internet, so he could stream Lindell’s cyber symposium, which promised and failed to deliver evidence the 2020 election was rigged against Donald Trump. Jensen’s lawyer argued back in June that he was “recognizing that he bought into a pack of lies.”

Jensen stormed through the US Capitol Building in a Q-Anon T-Shirt and was captured on film chasing Capitol Officer Eugene Goodman. Lindell is a noted election conspiracy theorist, and CEO and Founder of My Pillow, a Minnesota-based bedding company. Lindell is also slated to headline a 9/11 remembrance event in Davenport.

Jensen was in a Washington, DC, jail for months until July 13 when the federal government agreed to release him into his wife’s custody with a number of conditions including random visits by a probation officer, no-internet access, and undergoing mental health and substance abuse screening.

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Jensen swore under oath to abide by those conditions. A month later he was found in his garage using an iPhone to stream news on Rumble—essentially a far-right version of YouTube—and later confessed to watching Lindell’s event a week before he was caught.

When questioned, the 41-year-old said the phone belonged to his teenage daughter, who later denied it was her device and told a pretrial service officer she had a new phone. Jensen then changed his story and said his wife leaves the news on for him when she goes to work in the morning. He also claimed he did not know the password to unlock the iPhone before proving he did by unlocking the device.

Jensen faces seven federal charges for his role on Jan. 6.

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During a July 27 hearing where some of Jensen’s home confinement restrictions were loosened under the premise of being able to do yard work, Judge Timothy J. Kelley of the US District Court for the District of Columbia said he heard the defendant was “doing awesome.”

Before he risked it all for Lindell, Jensen was close to reaching a plea deal with the federal government and had a Sept. 24 court date on the docket.

In the filing, prosecutors urged the court to place Jensen back in jail because he can’t be trusted to abide by the stipulations of his home release.

“To allow Jensen to remain on pretrial release would be to repose trust in an undeserving individual who has already proven himself unwilling to modify, much less rethink, his behavior after January 6,” the filing states.

“Jensen remains a danger to the community and cannot be trusted by this Court to abide by any conditions of release.”

 

by Ty Rushing
08/20/21

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  • Ty Rushing

    Ty Rushing is the Chief Political Correspondent for Iowa Starting Line. He is a trail-blazing veteran Iowa journalist, an Emmy-nominated filmmaker, and co-founder and president of the Iowa Association of Black Journalists. Send tips or story ideas to [email protected] and find him on social media @Rushthewriter.

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