J6 American Nightmare: Lt. Col. Larry Brock

The Netflix documentary "American Nightmare" sheds light on the destructive combination of corrupt law enforcement and unaccountable news media. J6ers have their own horrifying stories to tell.

Photo by Milad Fakurian on Unsplash

This is a guest post written by January 6 defendant Larry Brock, who was recently released from federal prison on nonviolent charges related to his participation in the Capitol protest. Brock is a retired Lieutenant Colonel for the Air Force; he graduated from the Air Force Academy and went on to pilot the A-10 for more than 20 years in Iraq, Afghanistan, and Syria.

As more J6ers are released from jail, I plan to use my platform to help share their stories with you and the public so the American people can begin to understand the cruelty, vengefulness, and inhumanity of the legal/judicial/penal system weaponized against them and how the media only exacerbates the torment.

         

As I stood with my fellow pilots and sensor operators inside a bunker at Al Asad Airbase in Iraq, we all began to recite the Lord's Prayer. Just a few seconds earlier the klaxon had sounded "incoming, incoming" to mark inbound Iranian theater ballistic missiles. Dressed in body armor and helmets we waited for the impact knowing that a direct hit would kill us.

Fortunately the missile was not accurate and missed us. I survived the Iranian January attack in 2020, but just a few years later I would not be as fortunate while standing in a D.C. courthouse waiting for the impact of the Department of Justice's court case and Judge John Bates' decision.

 I have fully documented my actions on January 6 on my website, but a basic recitation of some of the facts is necessary to support this story.

I flew to Washington D.C. on January 5, 2021 to listen personally to the President and to be among patriots on what I believed would be a historic day. I hoped that on the 6th, Vice President Mike Pence would work with the Senate and send the vote back to the States where voter fraud was most prevalent. When I arrived at the Capitol, an unindicted man had removed the fencing and the Ray Epps breach team had already done their work on the bicycle fencing barriers.

I crossed no fencing nor encountered any barriers and saw absolutely no violence prior to reaching the doors outside the entrance to the Capitol. As I moved to enter, I walked directly by four Capitol policemen who said nothing to me nor any other protester as we entered the building.

After a short time in the building, I saw a protester chasing a man in coat and tie and grabbed the protester and physically restrained him from continuing the chase and then placed myself between the man in coat and tie and another man dressed totally in black who appeared to me to be threatening him. The man in coat and tie was Capitol police officer Nairobi Timberlake who had dressed in plain clothes that day and he later testified in my trial that I used my command presence to defuse a tense situation and protected him.

Following this, I walked down a set of stairs and unfortunately for me while among a crowd by a door, I stepped on and then picked up a set of zip ties followed by a second set as well. These zip ties had been abandoned by the Capitol police guarding the door.

I then went to the Senate gallery and told protesters not to destroy anything and eventually worked my way down to the Senate floor and told a man to get out of the Vice President's chair as it was disrespectful for him sit in it. I deterred protesters from damaging the Senate and stealing anything.

When I decided to leave, I approached an officer and asked him where the nearest exit was. He told me he would escort me there and we walked side by side talking to the exit. As I exited the Capitol, I stopped a man from confronting the police. All of this is on video but unfortunately for me, half of America chooses to believe regime media over their own eyes.  I encourage you to go to www.larrybrockjr.com and watch yourself and form your own opinion.

Another Real-Life “American Nightmare”

Upon my return to Dallas, I went and saw my then six-year-old son as it was my day to visit him.

Little did I know that it would be the last time to hug him for several years.

Immediately after I dropped him off on the night of the January 7, I began to receive death threats. This is unfortunately normal behavior from the left in America towards conservatives and nothing is being done to stop it.

As I pulled into my home, a true friend called and asked if she could come over. She wanted to know if it was me on the Senate floor and I told her it was. She stayed with me for the next few days and comforted me until I drove to surrender myself to the FBI.

On Friday, January 8, a Ronan Farrow article in the New Yorker came out and he stated I was a white supremacist. This prompted a rare moment of levity during this trying time as my friend who happened to be from Nigeria looked at me and smiled saying, "I didn't know you were a racist." I laughed and said, "I didn't either."

 On Sunday, just before noon, the FBI called and said they wanted to speak with me. I told them I was glad they called and referred them to the lawyer friend to set up the meeting. They initially agreed to meet at his office but then changed the location to the Grapevine [Texas] police station. Later, my lawyer friend called and advised me that a warrant had been issued for my arrest.

I was supposed to meet the FBI at 4:30 in the afternoon, but knowing the way they worked, I showed up an hour early and foiled their publicity plan as they had alerted the media to be there. I know this because my nieces showed up to get my car at 4:30 and saw the media presence.

 Telling me they just wanted to speak was just the first of many untruths told to me by the agency I now refer to as the “FBLie.”  I was arrested on the spot by an FBI SWAT team and taken into the Grapevine City jail. The FBI agent and his partner then tried to interview me without my attorney present. I chose to exercise my right to remain silent until I had legal counsel.

The first night in jail was a long night, but I want to thank the Grapevine City Jail guards for getting me a Bible. If you ever find yourself in prison and as a MAGA conservative you just might if Biden wins in November, I recommend you begin reading in the Book of Acts. The Apostle Paul spent many days in prison. Never once in all my time in prison was I ever deprived of God's holy word, but I will now hide it in my heart in much greater quantities and urge you to do the same. A man with a tattered Bible will not have a tattered life. I wish I believed that as a younger man with the fervor I do now.

The following day the two FBI agents drove me to my arraignment and en route they told me that I was looking at two felonies with forty years of jail time for my crimes. FBI Agent John Moore tried the "military buddy" good cop routine to get me to talk. He revealed to me that he had served in the U.S. Army in Iraq. I again refrained from talking. They followed the felony lie with the statement I would be allowed to speak with a lawyer when we arrived at the courthouse in Fort Worth but that did not happen.

At the arraignment I realized the full weight of the U.S. government was aimed directly at me. Unfortunately for me, I was in the initial wave of arrests where the government wanted to create a "shock and awe" campaign against patriots like me.

Life as a Political Prisoner Begins

Following arraignment, I was sent to the Parker County jail and placed in solitary confinement for four days. At a hearing the following Thursday, January 14, to determine whether or not I would be released, my parents had to endure seeing me shackled in the orange jumpsuit of a prisoner.

In the court, I was dismayed to hear FBI Agent Moore compromise his integrity by failing to tell the whole truth mere seconds after swearing to tell the whole truth. It involves a minor point about the Punisher patch I wore into the Capitol but still bothers me to this day. He said the patch I wore signified my commitment to vigilante justice but he intentionally omitted the fact it has been adopted by both Iraq and Afghanistan war veterans as a signal to other veterans we were there.

FBI Agent Moore knows this as an Iraq war veteran, but that fact didn't fit the insurrection narrative they were carefully weaving. At the Air Force Academy this failure to tell the whole truth is called quibbling and is a de facto lie.

The prosecution then showed still shots from a stairwell video camera of me holding the zip ties I had picked up, but the U.S. attorney willfully misled the American people by stating that I had either brought them to the Capitol or by good fortune found them. I am certain by that time the government had fully examined that particular video in its entirety as they would have wanted to add as many charges as possible.

The U.S. attorney then implied I meant to hurt the Vice President by using the zip ties to kidnap him.  I have never understood how a man that told someone to respect the chair the Vice President sits in could also be accused of wanting to hurt the man who sits in it.

The cognitive dissonance put forth by the U.S. attorney was designed again to further the violent insurrection narrative and played marvelously on loop on regime media outlets; during the second impeachment Chinese spy and California Congressman Eric Swalwell recited this lie.

Fortunately, at the time I was only charged with misdemeanors and the Federal Judge in Fort Worth allowed me to go home to house arrest with a GPS ankle bracelet. I now refer to these bracelets as Biden manacles. I would remain under house arrest for the next seven months.

 Over the next year the government kept asking for delays in going to trial and these were granted almost automatically to them. This benefited me in most ways though as the lynch mob hysteria of the left gradually died down, but for some reason, the government added a felony obstruction charge in June.

Shredding of the First Amendment

They never provided a reason for singling out some protesters but not others for the 1512 felony obstruction charge.

Congress had adjourned prior to the time I entered the building due to the "pipe bombs" found at the Democratic National Headquarters and the Republican National Headquarters. (Darren Beattie of Revolver News has been excellent in uncovering and tracing the pipe bombs and exposing the falsehoods around them.)

Eventually, I wound up in the E. Barrett Prettyman Federal Courthouse in Washington D.C,. Just so that you understand the feeling of hopelessness this building inspires in J6ers, please understand that twice the number of defendants were found not guilty of the Reichstag fire in Nazi Germany than those acquitted when facing the DOJ for protesting in the Capitol on January 6th. That is how biased against MAGA conservatives this courthouse and its judges are.

Four communists in Nazi Germany walked free from Hitler's courts and only two MAGA patriots have walked free of all charges from Biden's courts. [Editor’s note: Two men were fully acquitted after bench trials. Not a single J6er has been fully acquitted by a DC jury after more than two years of jury trials.]

My trial followed a familiar pattern used by the government in all J6 persecutions.

The DOJ shows a magic red line on an overhead map of the Capitol where fencing was supposed to be, but this fencing was removed by the previously cited unindicted man (Darren Beattie, Meet Ray Epps Part II).

They then show the J6 defendant on trial’s path to the Capitol. I entered at the precise point where Ray Epps led the breach of the fencing at exactly the same time the two pipe bombs were supposed to have detonated and made my way up to the Capitol. The rest of the prosecution’s case has already been described but an interesting piece of evidence was then introduced to my trial.

The government brought into evidence against me a quote from the Declaration of Independence. The quote was, "... when a long train of abuses and usurpations, pursuing invariably the same object evinces a design to reduce them under absolute despotism, it is their right, it is their duty to throw off such government and to provide new guards for their future security.”

In an American court, an American prosecutor admitted into evidence against an American military officer a quote from one of the two most hallowed American documents in our Republic's history. My attorney whispered to me, "can you believe this is happening?" I shook my head and said, "no, this is unbelievable."

One other point that is continually brought up and used against me time and time again I would like to finally address is the “action list.” I had just read Chuck Palahniuk's book “Adjustment Day,” which contained a very farcical and quite bloody take down of the U.S. government.

It was so ridiculous that I began to think about how it could be done. I started talking with a friend who was an Army green beret and we continued discussing this via text, phone and unfortunately for me via Facebook private chat. The supreme irony in all of this is we concluded it could not be done due to defense in depth, too many centers of gravity, and too broad a band of command and control.

We then marveled at the fact that our revolution in 1776 was successful and rightfully concluded that if King George III only had the FBI, we would be drinking tea, watching soccer, and singing “God Save the King.” The bottom line is that this discussion was private speech between two warriors, not an active checklist but at this point I doubt the truth can overcome the lie.

I believe private military locker room talk between should have been classified as free speech and I wish that Judge Bates had felt the same way and used this opportunity to strike a blow for the 1st Amendment.

 If only I had been chanting "from the river to the sea, Palestine will be free," then the Biden DOJ would have recognized this as free speech. If only I would have been part of the mob that attacked the White House in May of 2020, then the DOJ would not have charged me with crimes, but I did not do either of those things.

If I have to listen to the left’s odious genocidal speech in order to protect the First Amendment, shouldn't they have to provide the right with equal protection under law when we protested at the Capitol?  Either all Americans are protected by the Constitution or none of us are.

Under counsel's advice, I remained silent in accordance with the 5th Amendment throughout the trial, but to the surprise of no one, I was found guilty on all counts.

 The sentencing hearing occurred a few months later. We requested a delay due to then-Speaker Kevin McCarthy promising to release all of the Capitol surveillance tapes, but as is usually the case for defendants across America, delays are mostly only given to the government.

At sentencing, although the DOJ asked for six years, but the Judge Bates gave me only two years due to a 23-year history of service to the country, the complete lack of violent behavior and extraordinary character references from friends and former commanders.

In his dressing down, he told me that my military locker room discussion with my friend about “Adjustment Day” was reprehensible. As I reflected on his ruling, I was saddened by the fact that this verdict signaled to conservative Americans the fact that they had lost the protection of the 1st, 4th, and 6th Amendment rights. I tried not to think of the fairness of the verdict when compared with the complete lack of prosecution of the BLM/Antifa George Floyd riots and remembered that no one ever said life would be fair.

 I was extraordinarily lucky to have outstanding legal counsel and one of the fairest judges on the D.C. circuit in the opinion of J6ers. Although I disagree with his verdict and have appealed his decision as is my legal right, I have nothing but respect for the position Judge Bates holds and nothing but contempt for Merrick Garland’s creation of a two-tiered system of justice and his pervasive lawfare against conservative Americans.

Now that I knew I was going to jail, I savored my remaining few months of freedom. I gave as much of my time and resources as possible to the woman I loved and spent time with her and my family. I also ate as much as I wanted which at my age you can never do, and ballooned up 30 lbs. I told myself that it didn't matter though as I had a plan.

As soon as I entered Springfield Gulag, I would begin a hunger strike which I doubted I would survive.

The next installment of Larry’s account will cover his incarceration, the destruction of his career, impact on his family, and his appeal, which resulted in the D.C. appellate court reversing a DOJ-requested enhancement applied to the prison sentences of those convicted of the 1512(c)(2) obstruction count. The legality of that charge in J6 cases is now pending before the Supreme Court.