90 More Days…

Reflections on 1,460 Days of Federal Supervision Coming to an End.

-by Brandon Straka

In 90 Days I will have completed 1,460 days of federal supervision.

This is 4 years to the day that a team of FBI agents in tactical gear, newly under Joe Biden’s and Merrick Garland’s command, stormed my apartment on the morning of Monday, January 25th, 2021, got me out of bed, put me in handcuffs, and took me to jail.

While I was in jail being ordered to strip naked in front of a guard, surrender my personal property, and put on an orange jumpsuit and plastic sandals, the FBI agents in my home were busy seizing my computers, my phones, iPads, hard drives, thumb drives, cameras, and clothing.

I sat in 24 hour lockdown in an 8x8 concrete cell with a metal door, and a tiny vertical window, for 2 and a half days; released in the middle of the night after the government told my first judge at my preliminary hearing that they didn’t believe my “actions” on January 6th warranted detention pending trial. This was shockingly absurd, as just hours before the same DOJ sent the FBI to my home as if they were searching for Osama Bin Laden.

This incident was my first experience with the DOJ’s shameless, irrational, and uncompromising dishonesty. However, this unhinged and unscrupulous deceit would now become an omnipresent new normal in my life, a relentless theme hovering forebodingly over me at all times.

The first morning after my release I met with the criminal attorney my employees had found for me while I was locked up. He informed me that the government had charged me so far with 2 felonies and a misdemeanor, and threatened to add a third felony- the now infamous 1512 “obstruction of an official proceeding” felony, that the government fraudulently applied to J6 defendants, telling them, “this charge carries up to 20 years in federal prison”, in order to coerce plea deals by overcharging people into a state of terror and despair. The government DID charge many J6 defendants with 1512 as a punishment if they refused plea deals, and the government has gotten a near 100% conviction rate on these charges in the virulently anti-Trump district of Washington, DC, where all January 6th cases are forced to be carried out- to ensure victory for the DOJ.

After numerous 1512 convictions, and numerous defendants serving years in federal prison on these convictions, the Supreme Court struck down the Biden/Harris DOJ’s wrongful application of 1512. Little good this does for those who’ve already lost years of their lives and hundreds of thousands of dollars trying to fight for their innocence against the government.

My attorney and I determined in our first conversation that getting felony charges dropped in exchange for a misdemeanor plea was the only way forward for me. The DOJ prosecutor in my case had already told my lawyer that if I pled guilty my case would be resolved in “60 to 90 days”. My attorney told me that nobody goes to jail on a first offense misdemeanor, so if I pled guilty the judge would give me time served on the days I’d just spent in jail, and that within 90 days all of this would be behind me.

It’s almost laughable in retrospect that I was sweating those first 90 days as hard as I was. My lawyers had told me that as a matter of strategy, they wanted complete silence from me during my case. After all, the entire reason why the government was targeting me, and creating the elaborate lies about my “criminal behavior” on that day was because I have been such a loud and successful voice in the conservative movement. As my lawyer put it, “I need you to just disappear. I want them to forget that you ever existed.”

And so I did. No social media posting, no media interviews, no fund raising, no events, nothing. Just silence. And I spent every one of those first 90 days in a state of panic that 90 days of silence from me might be enough to destroy the momentum of my work, my relationship with my audience and the media that I’d spent years working with, and my ability to recover from this hit and these false accusations.

So I waited. And waited. And waited.

And finally in the late afternoon of the 89th day, the government contacted us to say, “We need 90 more days.” My lawyer told me there was no point in fighting them on it. He said that the judge would grant them the 90 day extension anyway, and all that would be accomplished is that we’d create further friction between us and the DOJ. And so, we granted them their request for 90 more days. But in keeping with the theme of pathological lying and gaslighting from the government, when they filed their motion for extension they said it was US who wanted extra time because WE were not ready, and that they were graciously granting us an extension. They never miss a single opportunity to flex their muscles and remind you who is running the show.

And so I sat in silence once again for every agonizing minute of the next 89 days. And on the afternoon of the 89th day, the government came back to us once again… “We need 90 more days.”

Despair. Not only because I had already endured 180 days of silence in a case that was supposed to be fully behind me within 60 to 90 days, but because I now understood that nothing the government tells you means anything. It’s arbitrary. Just words. Nothing they say means anything. You can count on nothing. You’re a hostage being held by the most mentally sick members of our society who, rather than being institutionalized in a sanitarium where they might get the help they desperately need to treat their delusional and insane paranoia about Trump supporters… instead these deranged people have control of the most powerful institutions on the planet, with the ability to do anything they want to me without any oversight.

So we granted the DOJ their second request for 90 more days. And on the afternoon of the 89th day, they got back to us… “We need 90 more days.”

And they did this again a fourth time, and then a fifth. Until “90 more days” became 365. An entire year of silence, an entire year that I had “disappeared” since this nightmare began with the FBI raiding my home.

Finally, the day came for me to be sentenced.

Perhaps by this point I was in denial, desperate to believe that once a federal judge got involved with my case, I would finally be in the presence of a fair-minded person who would see the egregious, hideous injustice of all that had happened to me, and that I might finally be treated with humanity.

How wrong I was.

My lawyer assured me that it was highly likely I would given time served, as I have no prior record, my guilty plea was on a low level, non-violent misdemeanor, and I never entered the Capitol on January 6th, and I wasn’t a part of the riot that had occurred on the other side of the building.

It was a complete shock when my judge, with a tone of hostility and contempt, spoke of how grievous and heinous my “actions” were on that day. She seemed to take umbrage in having her hands tied by my class b misdemeanor, expressing that due to the low level crime I’d pled to, she was prevented from being able to give me both prison time plus probation. In order to put me on probation, she’d have to give me only house arrest.

And so, she sentenced me… to 90 more days… of home confinement, with a court ordered ankle monitor, confined to the space of my apartment.

In addition, I was sentenced to 60 hours of community services, fines, fees, mental health services, and 3 years of federal supervision.

I quickly paid my fines and fees, did my community service, served my house arrest, and now, as of today, I have 90 more days of probation until a 4 year long nightmare comes to an end.

As you might imagine by now, I no longer trust the federal government, and the words “90 more days” mean nothing to me. If Donald Trump does not win the election on November 5th, I will spend the next two and a half months holding my breath, waiting for the government to drop the other shoe during the remaining days of my probation.

I’ve learned the hard way, again and again, that when the US government wants to make its citizens suffer, they draw their abuses out as long as possible, then reveal on the last possible day that they’re instigating something new.

I have no reason to believe this would be any different.

If Harris wins, the DOJ will have no incentive whatsoever to keep itself in check. It will be a bold confirmation to the government that the lies, abuses, and suffering doled out by the Biden/Harris DOJ over the past 4 years are perfectly acceptable and inconsequential for them, and that there is no reason to stop.

The statute of limitations on J6 arrests is 5 years.

What happens on November 5th will be a stark crossroads in the trajectory of the future of targets of the January 6th prosecutions. If Trump is to become president, we have a shot at pardons, prisoner releases, and the possibility of some sort of restitution. If it is Harris, I expect the DOJ will savagely double and triple down on their quest to destroy as many Trump supporters as they can in their final year of arrests.

Pray for our country.