Late on Jan. 20, as many Jan. 6 defendants were getting the good news that they would be released from prison under presidential pardons and sentence commutations, Jeremy Brown sat in his cell at the District of Columbia jail, crushed.
President Donald J. Trump published a proclamation naming nine Oath Keepers whose sentences would be commuted to time served. Brown, 50, of Tampa, assumed he would be on that list. When his name was not among the commutations, his composure fractured.
“I had about a 10 minute lash-out at my roommate over his lack of understanding of what this all meant,” Brown wrote in an update from behind bars in the federal penitentiary in Atlanta. “Then I broke down and cried.
‘Mama, they’re not letting me out.’
“A 50-year-old, 20-year special operator now doubled over and crying like a baby,” Brown wrote. “I cried until I couldn’t any more, while [cellmate] Jason simply patted my shoulder and said the only thing he could, ‘I’m sorry, man. I’m really sorry.’”
Brown’s life has been tumultuous since President Trump took office. He’s wondering why he is still locked up after receiving a pardon. Brown’s Jan. 6 misdemeanor case in D.C. was dismissed with prejudice based on a motion from the new D.C. U.S. Attorney Edward R. Martin Jr.
Brown’s April 2023 conviction on weapons-possession charges grew out of a Jan. 6 search warrant served on his Tampa home, issued in Washington by U.S. Magistrate Judge Zia Faruqui. Brown said he was told he can’t be released because of his Florida case and 87-month prison term. Defense attorneys say the Florida case is a Jan. 6 case that is covered by Trump’s pardon.
Brown has contended for 3.5 years that the weapons charges brought against him in 2021 were payback for his December 2020 refusal to become an informant for the FBI’s Joint Terrorism Task Force. He said two agents tried to recruit him to spy on the Oath Keepers. He refused, and nearly three months later he released a recording of his meeting with the JTTF agents.
Jeremy Brown was a U.S. Army Green Beret and served in special forces for more than 20 years. He sits in federal prison awaiting release on a presidential pardon.Photos courtesy of Tylene Aldrige
As difficult as those late hours were on Jan. 20, it was just a painful preview of things to come. There would be more heartbreak and disappointment, then more still. Brown was pardoned by President Trump on Jan. 20, yet even 14 days later, Brown remains imprisoned, sure of only one thing: the pain of disappointment.
“The main problem is, I allowed people to convince me that it would come true,” Brown said. “That has been a painful error.”
As Inauguration Day waned in Washington, D.C., stories started to trickle into the jail of J6 inmates set free, walking out the front doors of dozens of federal prisons.
‘Maybe this will happen’
“The other J6ers in my pod (five others, including my cellmate, Jason Tasker) began to rejoice, and even I began to think, ‘Maybe this WILL happen,’” Brown said. “News of delayed and late releases gave hope.”
Just before noon on Jan. 21, Brown’s cell door opened and a guard stepped in, exclaiming something Brown had trouble believing.
“Brown, Tasker, pack up, you are being released!” the guard said. “My immediate response to him was, ‘Oh, don’t f**k with me!’” Brown said. “He chuckled and said, ‘No, man, you outta here!’ My next sentence was, ‘I’m not gonna argue with you!’ I hurriedly shoved my books, documents, mail, and newspapers in that bag as fast as I could.”
Even as his cellmate celebrated their pending freedom, Brown had some trepidation.
‘Before sunrise, we were back in chains.’
“Even as we packed and Jason celebrated, I told him, ‘I won’t believe it until we are outside!’ Within minutes, we were dragging our mats through the pod.”
A female U.S. marshal appeared in the hallway, ostensibly to process Brown and others for release. Brown quickly called his girlfriend, Tylene Aldridge, who had come with Brown’s mother to D.C. in case Brown was let out.
“When Tylene answered, I could hear the excitement in her voice as I said they were releasing me,” Brown recalled. “She told me they were already outside. Then it was back to a cell to wait.”
Brown didn’t have to wait long for news, and it stung fiercely.
“Before long, a D.C. jail captain came and told us, ‘You are no longer in our control. The marshal has you now!’”
Oath Keeper Jeremy Brown rescues a woman after she collapsed at the police line on the Upper Terrace at the U.S. Capitol on Jan. 6, 2021.Photo by by Sandi Bachom/Getty Images
The marshal pulled Brown from his cell and told him he was not being released.
“As she told me I was not gonna be released, she looked more disappointed than I, because I just smiled with that, ‘Of course I’m not’ look,” Brown said. “I simply asked if she was sure, said, ‘OK,’ and asked to use the phone again.”
It was a call Brown dreaded to make. When he could not reach Aldridge, he called his mother. He didn’t want to tell her.
“‘Mama, they’re not letting me out.’ I could hear her tears starting as she slowly said, ‘Oh, baby, I’m so sorry.’ As if it was her fault. I didn’t have much time, told her I loved her, then made my way back to my cell, having just left it a few hours ago.”
Brown returned to his cell, which was now stripped bare due to his expected release. Twenty-six hours into his ordeal, Brown struggled to find an upside to his situation.
“Well, I have my own room now, so I get to take a s**t with some privacy,” he thought to himself.
Within a few hours, all five of his pod-mates returned to their cells, their own releases also withdrawn.
‘You weren’t supposed to be here.’
“We spent most of the night silent, disappointed and at ground zero,” he said. “No food. No extra clothing. No way to call. No freedom.”
On Jan. 22, a visit from the nurse was the signal that Brown was about to move. She took everyone’s temperature, the most sure sign inmates were going to be moved out.
After a day in a holding cell, Brown was loaded onto a van with seven other inmates and taken on an eight-hour drive to the Pike County Detention Center in Pikeville, Ky. Brown was put into a 20-by-20 cell and given a “pretty good chicken sandwich” and a sleeping mat. “Before sunrise,” he said, “we were back in chains.”
A five-hour van ride took Brown to the Grayson County Detention Center in Leitchfield, Ky. He was assigned to a cell designed for 10, joined by 15 other men.
Oath Keeper Jeremy Brown, a former Army Green Beret, stops to answer questions on his way from the Ellipse to the U.S. Capitol on Jan. 6, 2021.Photo by Luke Coffee
“Here I would stay through the weekend,” Brown said, “with nothing but the clothes I wore and sleeping — once again — on the floor in a cell made for 10 inmates. I was number 16. In the last spot of floor, right by the bathroom. Joy!”
On Jan. 27, Brown was told he was moving out again. On the chart of men waiting for the van, the destination for Brown was blacked out. It wasn’t until they were under way that Brown learned his destination was FCI Atlanta, a low-security prison in northern Georgia. Six more hours in shackles. Once there, Brown was the only one of the 11 men let off at the Atlanta prison. He was assigned Cell #A3614 on the sixth floor.
On Jan. 30, Brown was summoned out of his cell.
“Then, just before 4 p.m., I heard, ‘Brown, 614!’ I walked out and the officer waved me down. He said, ‘Why have I been calling you all day?’ I told him, ‘Because I’m not supposed to be here!’”
‘Pack up all your stuff’
“That’s when he said it. The words I had waited for. ‘Pack up all your stuff and report to R&D.'”
Brown asked two of his cellmates what it meant.
“They both had been in for a while and both said, ‘You’re going home!!’”
Brown asked his escort officer what was happening. He said he didn’t know.
“’I’m a 20-year Green Beret combat veteran. I led a HALO team that jumped out of planes in the dark at 20,000+ feet, and this was the most nervous I have ever been in my life!’” Brown said he told him. “’Because I’ve already been told I would be free once in the last week and a half!’ He chuckled. I did not.”
Brown was not released. His belongings were taken from him. He was issued yellow pants and put back in a cell.
“The only thing I’ve been told,” Brown said, “is, ‘You weren’t supposed to be here, so the U.S. marshals will come and get you.’”
The marshals have not come to get Brown. His family and supporters can’t understand why he is still being held and shuttled around the country by the Bureau of Prisons and the U.S. Marshals. As his attorney, Carolyn Stewart, seeks help from the White House and the new U.S. Attorney’s Office in D.C., Brown waits.
President Trump pledged to act on behalf of Jan. 6 defendants within the first nine minutes of his administration. Brown has watched those nine minutes turn into 14 days. He wonders if he will get out under the president’s pardon or be stuck in the Atlanta prison until his release on Dec. 4, 2027.
“This is not a news story or blurb running along the bottom of a screen to me,” Brown said. “This is my life, my freedom, the moment I’ve spent every waking moment thinking of for over 1,215 days (I’ve lost count), exposing the truth and walking out of this place in victory.”
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