White House could intervene to free Jan. 6 Oath Keepers defendant Jeremy Brown, lawyer says

A decorated former U.S. Army Green Beret master sergeant pardoned by President Donald J. Trump on Jan. 6 charges still sits in prison because of his related Florida gun conviction, but his attorney says the White House appears ready to intervene to free him.

Jeremy Michael Brown, 50, of Tampa, Fla., was awaiting a Feb. 13 trial in Washington, D.C., on two trespass-related misdemeanor charges stemming from his presence at the U.S. Capitol on Jan. 6, 2021. Brown is a 20-year veteran of Army special forces and was awarded two Bronze Stars.

President Trump issued pardons for more than 1,500 Jan. 6 defendants, including Brown, on Jan. 20. But unlike more than 200 fellow defendants in federal custody, Brown was not released. He was already serving federal prison time on a gun case launched based on items found during a Jan. 6 FBI raid of his home on Sept. 30, 2021.

'Jeremy had a mat on the floor by the toilet.'

“Reliable sources confirm that our facts about Jeremy reached the White House and the solution is in the works,” defense attorney Carolyn Stewart posted on X. “Actions underway. Have faith.”

Brown’s girlfriend, Tylene Aldridge, said the message about Brown’s continued imprisonment has been received by the right ears in D.C.

“We had the right connection to the right people from every angle and got Jeremy’s story to all of the right people,” Aldridge told Blaze News. “Yes, I believe Jeremy will be released, but it may take days. I’m grateful that President Trump kept his promise, but I always knew that he would. I never had a doubt.”

Brown was shuttled from D.C. to the Grayson County Detention Center in Kentucky, where jail conditions are said to be worse than in D.C.

“The facility is overcrowded: U.S. Marshals transfers with 15 men in a room with one toilet and 10 beds,” Stewart said. “Jeremy had a mat on the floor by the toilet. No commissary because of the two-week delivery time. Kudos — Sen. Rand Paul went to the jail to raise hell.”

Brown’s supporters see the government’s refusal to release Brown as ongoing persecution because he refused to spy on the Oath Keepers as an informant and blew the whistle on the FBI’s December 2020 attempt to recruit him.

Stewart said the excuses offered by the federal Bureau of Prisons and the U.S. Marshals Service are flat wrong. Brown’s Florida gun case and April 7, 2023, conviction are part of the U.S. Department of Justice’s Jan. 6 prosecutions.

Brown was sentenced to 87 months in prison by U.S. District Judge Susan Bucklew on six criminal counts that included possessing a short-barrel rifle and shotgun, possession of explosive grenades, improper storage of explosive grenades, and willful retention of a national defense document. Brown was acquitted of four other counts.

“Jeremy Brown’s Florida conviction is 100% ‘J6-related,’ as required by the presidential proclamation,” Stewart told Blaze News in a statement. “Jeremy was arrested and imprisoned based on J6 allegations of terrorism that led to the search warrant and an evidence plant.”

At noon the day after President Trump’s proclamation on Jan. 6 commutations and pardons, Brown said guards at the District of Columbia jail told him he would be released. His mother and girlfriend were outside the facility waiting.

Oath Keeper Jeremy Brown (left) talks to Metropolitan Police Department officers on the Upper Terrace of the U.S. Capitol just prior to 4:30 p.m. on Jan. 6, 2021.Metropolitan Police Department body cam

After two hours of waiting to be processed for release, Brown said, “I was pulled aside and told I was not being released because of my conviction as a result of the government’s illegal search warrant and framing of me. I was turned back by U.S. Marshals because of that Florida case.”

Aldridge said she was waiting for Brown outside the D.C. jail in freezing temperatures.

“I sat out in front of the D.C. jail for two hours in 18 degrees waiting for him to walk out,” Aldridge told Blaze News. “I had a duffel bag packed with all of his clothes that he requested I bring. When my phone rang with a 202 area code, I knew it would be bad news.”

The D.C.-based criminal case against Brown was dismissed with prejudice by Judge Amit Mehta on Jan. 21, on a motion from the new Department of Justice.

Since the FBI raid on his Tampa home in 2021, Brown has consistently expressed the belief that the search was in retaliation for his refusal to become a paid FBI confidential informant to spy on the Oath Keepers. On Dec. 11, 2020, Brown met with two FBI agents in Ybor City, Fla., and apparently refused their entreaties.

He recorded the meeting and released the recording on March 4, 2021, during an interview with Brandon Gray of "Just Another Channel." People repeatedly posted links to the podcast on the Facebook page of the FBI’s Tampa field office.

'The two grenades had DNA, fingerprints, fibers, and hair that did not match Jeremy.'

“So they were well aware that their failed CI [confidential informant] recruit was now an outspoken ‘whistleblower’ exposing the FBI’s actions prior to Jan 6th,” Brown wrote in a December 2021 letter to the Epoch Times.

Shortly after Brown went public with the FBI’s failed attempt to make him an informant to spy on the Oath Keepers, agents began contacting his family and friends, Brown said.

“My own sister was personally contacted on her new cell phone number by the very agent that was in the recorded recruitment meeting,” Brown said in the December 2021 letter.

Brown said the agent told his sister that “the FBI/DHS was ‘concerned’ I had been ‘radicalized’ and that I may be ‘suicidal,'" Brown said. This was particularly upsetting, he said, because he and his siblings lost a brother to suicide in late 2018.

The search of Brown’s home was unusual because it was authorized not by a federal magistrate in Florida but by one in D.C. because of alleged ties to “terrorism.” The warrant did not specify what agents were seeking, defense attorneys said.

Agents found two firearms that were not registered in the federal database on short-barrel rifles and shotguns, resulting in felony charges.

“There were two guns found in the search that came from his deceased brother and from their grandfather,” Stewart said. “These guns were unregistered heirlooms that had short barrels that would normally only be charged as a misdemeanor, if at all, under the IRS tax section of the U.S. Code.”

Oath Keeper Jeremy Brown at the U.S. Capitol on Jan. 6, 2021.U.S. Department of Justice

Agents who searched a recreational vehicle belonging to Brown and his girlfriend said they found two grenades, resulting in more felony charges. The RV had been parked in a nearby cul-de-sac. Brown said the grenades were not his and that he never saw them before.

The FBI did extensive forensic testing in an effort to link Brown to the explosives.

“The two grenades had DNA, fingerprints, fibers, and hair that did not match Jeremy, his RV, his residence, or his dogs,” Stewart said. “Yet he was convicted.”

Stewart said she is convinced that the grenades and a compact disc allegedly containing classified documents were planted by the government.

Since a pet hair was found on the explosives, they tested hair samples from Brown’s dog.

“The feds under Biden's [administration] and its Justice Department wanted Jeremy buried in prison, where he cannot expose anything,” she said. “They wanted him imprisoned before any other Oath Keepers trial so he could not testify that the entire sedition allegation was garbage.”

Brown’s Florida case is on appeal at the U.S. Court of Appeals for the 11th Circuit. According to appeal paperwork, the warrant “had no ‘items to be searched for’ on its face or incorporated,” Stewart said.

“The first thing the agents do when they get there and they go into the house is they turn off all the 14 recording devices, the cameras,” attorney Michael Ufferman said in Brown’s appeal brief, filed Oct. 23, 2023. “In this age of transparency, they turn off all the cameras.”

Agents took fiber samples and other evidence from the RV, looking to tie the grenades to Brown. Since a pet hair was found on the explosives, they tested hair samples from Brown’s dog.

“They get a search warrant, and they come back and take a whole bunch of samples from the dogs, about over 50 samples, to see if the dog fiber that was also found under the grenades matches his dogs,” Ufferman said. “Not his dogs.”

Ufferman said the FBI forensics speak volumes.

“Forensics do not lie, as the evidence will show,” he said in Brown’s appeal. “People do. And that’s why we’re here.”

Oral arguments in Brown’s appeal are scheduled for March 6 in Jacksonville, Fla.

Brown joined the Oath Keepers shortly after the November 2020 presidential election.

Video shows Brown peacefully walking from President Trump’s speech at the Ellipse to the Capitol, part of a group of Oath Keepers working security for conservative speakers on Jan. 6, 2021. He committed no acts of violence and saved an elderly woman from being stampeded as Metropolitan Police Department officers moved aggressively to clear the Upper Terrace at the Capitol.

An email to the new U.S. attorney for Washington, D.C., was not returned by press time.

Like Blaze News? Bypass the censors, sign up for our newsletters, and get stories like this direct to your inbox. Sign up here!