INSIDE THE PATRIOT WING

January 6 rioters are running their jail block like a gang. They're leaving more adicalized than ever

- TESS OWEN

Marc Bru, Jonathan Mellis, and David Dempsey record the podcast The DC Gulag.

Early in the evening of July 13 in an isolated cell block of the D.C. Jail, about two miles east of the Capitol Building, a dozen detainees charged with some of the most violent crimes committed on January 6, 2021, were participating in a thousand-burpee challenge. The group made up roughly half of the inmates held in the block, a special unit sequestered from the jail’s other prisoners and known to its residents as “the Patriot Wing.” The challenge was in honor of a former resident of the unit, a fitness evangelist, who had recently been transferred out to serve a five-year prison sentence for attacking police officers with a floor lamp, a shoe, a nightstick, and a spiked club made from a broken table leg and nails.

Around the same time, in the Western Pennsylvania town of Butler, Donald Trump was taking a rally stage to the tune of “God Bless America.” Scripps News, the primary channel played in the unit, was carrying the event live, and a few inmates were watching in the TV room, where residents kicked their feet up on the rows of couches. Somewhere around the 400th burpee, the pop of gunfire came through the TV speakers, and Trump, onscreen, grabbed his right ear and ducked below the podium. The inmates watching shouted that Trump had been shot, and others rushed into the room. Prisoners began screaming, sobbing, and clutching on to one another; they ran through the unit. Some attempted to flip over tables, though these were bolted to the floor. They checked their electronic tablets—allocated by the jail—and saw that they’d been taken offline. The block’s bank of phones also seemed to be disconnected.