J6 Defendant Andrew Johnson In Financial Ruin, On The Brink Of Homelessness Ahead Of Sentencing
GUEST POST: JENN BAKER, CONDEMNED USA
While we pass 3 and a half years of arrests and trials of innocent Americans for attending January 6th, 2021, more stories of these Patriots come to light. One of these stories is of J6 Defendant Andrew Johnson.
A single father from Naples, Florida. Andrew sat down with CondemnedUSA’s Jenn Baker for a recent interview and shed light on the craziness of what is known as the West Terrace.
Andrew authored a letter about what he experienced on Jan. 5th and the 6th and what he has endured since his arrest. He doesn’t hold back and shares receipts involving key players and the egregious behavior of his court-appointed Public Defender.
Throughout my upbringing, a copy of the Declaration of Independence prominently adorned the walls of each of my family members’ homes. However, it was not until I cast my vote in 2016 that I began to appreciate its significance.
My name is Andrew Johnson, and I am a direct descendant of Thomas Stone, one of the signers of the Declaration of Independence. Since my first vote, I have come to regard it as a beacon of true patriotism, guiding my understanding of civic duty and serving as a reference point when assessing governmental actions that may verge on tyranny.
January 6th is often portrayed as being solely about the election, but the election was merely the culmination for Americans who endured a 2.0 version of absolute despotism, mirroring the long train of usurpations warned against in our Declaration of Independence.
Unaware that COVID was merely the initial phase of what was to unfold, I shifted my focus to the election. It began with contentious debates over mail-in ballots and issues of chain of custody, continuing through Election Day. Video evidence emerged revealing ballots being adjudicated without witnesses, and falsehoods about broken water pipes. We all saw windows being obstructed, individuals being ejected from ballot sites or denied entry, accusations of counterfeit ballot paper due to size and texture, and USB sticks being surreptitiously exchanged in Atlanta by a mother and daughter. I began to question how any of this was allowed.
I sat in disbelief, a gnawing feeling of deep orchestration clawing at my gut.
It felt like an attack. It felt like America was under a new arm of power. It reminded me of what I always read in the Declaration of Independence.
I booked my flight to DC for Jan 5th.
***PLEASE SUPPORT ANDREW JOHNSON HERE***
My real Jan 6th experience started at check-in, where I believe I was screened by the FBI to “classify” protesters as “Proud Boys” or “threats to society” for simply being patriotic and loving our country.
Multiple officers approached me outside the lobby and asked me where the Proud Boys were meeting. They said that they were Proud Boys Florida. I replied, “Why are you asking me, don’t you have your people that know?”. They continued to tell us that we were “dressed like Proud Boys.” I laughed and jokingly said “did you just stereotype me?”
Afterward, I suggested to the doorman that they were law enforcement which he confirmed with a nod.
The morning of January 6, I woke up around noon and caught the tail end of President Trump’s speech. I felt more alive than ever before in my life. The love and unity on Jan 6 were contagious. It was a beautiful experience.
I pushed my way up close to the building without seeing any “no trespassing” signs and later learned that they had been taken down. As I protested with my speaker in the crowd, I thought the protest’s permit was for the location where all the people were. I had no idea I was even in a restricted area. Since I arrived by the west terrace window after the first breach and after the police line was broken at the base of the terrace, I saw no violence.
Seconds before the commotion at the tunnel started, a sea of patriotic Americans chanted “We the people” in unison, and it ran through my soul. Thinking of my grandfather Thomas Stone, and about the usurpations of the people, I felt ignited, my spirit was on fire.
In front of the west terrace window scuffles and shoving break out and the crowd chants “F*CK Antifa,” and pushing matches break out in front of it. Multiple people hit the window in an attempt to break it. Eventually, a man named Mitchell Gardner climbs up and finishes the job.
My heightened emotional and spiritual state was the driver of my actions as I entered the window to the left of the tunnel on the west terrace. After entering, things started to feel off. I noticed the desk was already in front of the doorway, blocking us all in. I asked, “What’s through that door? Why is it blocked off?”
I noticed a man with a camouflaged Trump hat splashing his face with water as if he were maced, later to find out he never was.
I heard everyone saying, “We’re going to get guns”, very nonchalantly. Everything in the room began to feel staged. Lack of logic sank in when Ryan Nichols announced to the crowd outside from the ledge that he received intel from inside.
Then came back inside to announce to the people inside that he has Intel magically somehow now from “outside.”
Well, I was in this room, and no intel was given inside of it.
Feeling like something was very off, I looked over to the door and saw a man
standing on the desk blocking the door, yet he was trying to open it? It’s physically impossible. This added to my suspicions about the room.
Suddenly, a long barrel gun poked through the opening he created from the corner of the door. This is when I crowd-surfed back out of the window.
Eventually, around 7:30 PM, they kettled about 30-60 of us for arrest or for “curfew” as I was told.
We rode on a mass arrest bus for about an hour to a police academy, but my ride was extra special. They blindfolded my face for the entire ride.
The officer who forced it onto my entire face nearly broke my teeth, as he wrestled aggressively to blindfold me.
I was arrested on January 6th for a curfew violation and again in December of 2022 for the “Big 4” charges for entering a window on the west terrace.
Life went on as I attended court hearings month after month, year after year. COVID had already devastated my financial health immensely. Hurricane Ian hit Collier County, and when it did, I saw it as an opportunity to help others hence my opinion on being on volunteer work before Hurricane Ian was that it was ridiculous and a waste of time. Well, it was contagious and addictive all at the same time to help others, much like the crowd at J6 was.
I volunteered for a month and was allowed to stay in the 55-and-up community while I was helping people pick up the pieces of their lives. Everything was going fine, and I finally started to see the light at the end of the financial tunnel once again, until I got the call that day from Peter Odom, my counsel who was appointed to me for my curfew arrest. He asked me if I was sitting down and went on to tell me that there was a new warrant for my arrest for entering the Capitol. Peter coordinated with the FBI and set a date to turn myself in, and it was all planned for that Thursday at 9:30 AM, with Dennis Porter, FBI of Tampa. I got back to work for four days, and then one night when I returned to the trailer, my entire life changed, once again.
I heard a knock on my door at 11 PM, which is very rare for these types of communities. It was the police. I showed them texts from Peter of my appointment with Porter and told them I already had a turn in date set. They didn’t care. They chose to arrive in this 55-and-up neighborhood with a complete SWAT-type military team, walking the streets of the neighborhood of elders flashing lights into homes and carrying long-barrel rifles, surrounding the trailer I was in. This show of force was a new threat to my livelihood and survival financially. I was processed and released to Lee/Collier County counter-terrorism agent Alexander Grandy (Badge #867). He transferred me to Fort Myers US Marshall’s office for processing, I was booked and released on an ROR and never offered bail. My pretrial officer “Reuben” was very rude and accusatory every time we spoke. Like he secretly hated me for some odd reason. He would spam call my phone 24 times within 3 minutes on a Sunday, and when I told him he was being a bit much, he changed my meetings with him from every 30 days to every week. It felt like he was trying to make my life a living hell.
***PLEASE SUPPORT ANDREW JOHNSON HERE***
In returning to my home, I realized through the people of the community that my arrest had spread like wildfire throughout the community, and they told me I had to leave the property. Day after day after my release, customers who had heard of my January 6th arrest started canceling installations. I had $40,000 to $60,000 worth of work lined up at that point, which all stemmed from my volunteer work clients. Most of the people in the neighborhood were from blue states and quickly fired me and blackballed me after witnessing the show of force from the government. A few even said “I wouldn’t have hired you if you knew you were a Trump guy”. I was forced to sleep in my van while I finished jobs for customers, but work ran out slowly due to the tarnishing of my reputation, and my time in Collier County ended.
I have been a single father for 22 years, and months before trial, while visiting my son, I was sleeping in a Walmart parking lot in my van, to be closer to my son. I was told by the police that I couldn’t park in a Walmart in Largo, FL, and was asked to leave. The officer ran my name and then asked me for my Social Security number, which was a first. The dispatcher on his shoulder responded with “Andrew Johnson, federal probation, Possible terrorist organization”, and this is BEFORE any conviction.
With court approaching, I am constantly calling my PD to ask for the videos that the still images in my statement of discovery stemmed from because I believe they could have come from a government agency.
I was told for 3 years and by 3 different public defenders that there was no video and that the discovery I received was the entire discovery, which only included still images, no videos.
My second attorney assigned I had to let go after realizing she believed “Antifa was an idea” and “BLM was not an organization”. She told the judge we had “different world views”, and I was assigned a special PD named David Howard, who was also openly a never-Trumper.
After a year or so of David representing me in status hearings, I began to feel the only way I was going to be able to fight these charges at trial was to go pro se. Especially after David told me he would not file the motions I requested
Not one motion was filed for me. I was just told, “It’s a waste of time, you’re not gonna win with a DC jury of 96% democrat voters and you’re just gonna piss off the judge”. So, I dropped David as a lawyer on April 2, 2024.
Before our next court hearing, he said something that should ring loud with us all, “say what you want to the judge about me, so he approves this, just don’t mention that we haven’t gone over discovery”, which was a major red flag to me.
On April 12, three days before my trial, the Government gave me access to a 33 GB folder of videos. I was shocked when I was told my discovery I was given is all they had, and it included none of these videos. I asked him why he would not have shown me or even told me they existed when I was asking him for the videos for years. He admitted that if I mention it to the judge, it will fall back on him but told me I gotta do what I gotta do.
So, I stayed up almost two days straight to prep for trial, but the file sizes were too massive for me to organize and plan my defense. I showed up for trial even without a paper of witness testimony to print out.
Feeling like I had no chance against the government, I told David I may have to tell the judge about never seeing discovery.
He quickly warned that I should just plead and not make this any more difficult on the judge, or he may throw me directly in jail and give me a harsher sentence if I keep “stalling” the courts. It all felt like some sort of intimidation tactic.
Feeling like the entire situation was stacked against me, with only three days to prep and not able to even view all my discovery before trial, I walked into the courtroom and pled guilty to all four counts I was facing, in hopes to avoid a “trial tax”.
A freelance journalist, American Summer (@AmericanSummer4) took notes during this process and told me that David Howard, my standby counsel (ex-PD), seemed to be very happy as I pled, borderline ecstatic. Even though I told him before entering that my soul is breaking even considering taking a plea. I was devastated. But David was excited and happy, like he felt some sort of accomplishment. Mind you he is openly a “Never Trumper” who calls us all “maggots”.
The whole thing went fast and felt like a blur. I left the courtroom saddened by the entire process I had lived through, feeling defeated by my own government I tried to stand for, and persecuted for simply caring about my country, its freedom, and free and fair elections. I took a few days to get over this horrible sick feeling in my gut and still battled whether I did the right thing or not that day.
Now I prepare for my sentencing on July 22, 2024. It’s been a long road, and I hope to be shown some sort of mercy, but I don’t have much faith that our government has any mercy for the American-loving patriots who were brave enough to show up on Jan 6th to exercise their voices on what we all believe was the tip of the iceberg of a very long train of usurpations on the people. I feel demoralized and exhausted from this long journey. Still, hearing the words from the Declaration of Independence ring over and over as I feel defeated by an unbeatable machine.
So, I ask you all this:
Who decides when a “long train of abuses and usurpations” is being committed on the people? Who decides when it’s the first usurpation? Second? Third? And what constitutes a “long train”? Three? Or more? It’s not clear in our founding fathers’ writings. If the government is truly corrupt to the bones, they surely won’t list their own usurpations. So, who decides when we are living through these long train of usurpations? Us? the people? This, to me, is the most important question all of us should be asking and may have to in the very near future.
Andrew is currently awaiting his sentence and needs financial assistance. He is currently without a permanent residence or job. He has been able to pick up work here and there which has kept him from living in his car as of today. However, he does not know what tomorrow will bring. To help Andrew please visit www.GiveSendGo.com/FreeJohnson
You can also help Andrew and other J6 Defendants by visiting www.CondemnedUSA.com
Follow Jenn Baker on X/ Truth Social/Gettr/ Substack @JennBakerMJB and Flip the Switch w/ Jenn (rumble.com)
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