William “Billy” Chrestman, the ax-handle-wielding Kansas City-area Proud Boy convicted of threatening officers and breaching the Capitol during the Jan. 6 riot, has been released from custody after serving 44 months of a 55-month sentence.
Chrestman’s release, less than a month before the November election, illustrates the complicated aftermath of former President Donald Trump’s 2020 loss — and the consequences for some of his supporters who entered the Capitol in hopes of overturning the results.
Over the more than three-and-a-half years following his role in the Capitol attack, Chrestman, 50, of Olathe, went from singing in the J6 Prison Choir at a D.C. jail to federal prison in Texas to a halfway house in the Kansas City area.
The U.S. Army veteran’s voice can be heard at Trump rallies as the campaign plays a recording of Jan. 6 defendants singing the National Anthem . Trump has promised to pardon “the patriots” who stormed the Capitol on that day.
And, during that time, his family raised more than $141,000 from 2,100 donors.
As Chrestman re-enters society — unable to vote because of his felony record — Trump is once again facing a close election that could come down to thousands of votes in a handful of swing states.
Both Trump and his campaign surrogates are already laying the groundwork to protest a potential loss, preparing supporters to reject a possible victory by Vice President Kamala Harris. They’ve accused Democrats of rigging their own election process, raising concerns about illegal voting and preparing an Election Day team to closely watch polling places.
“The guardrails in place are very strong, and the winner of the election, whoever that is, will have their hand on the Bible on January 20,” said David Becker, executive director of the Center for Election Innovation and Research. “But we should expect that there will be efforts in the post-election period to delegitimize and destabilize that process.”
More than 1,500 people have been charged for their roles in the Capitol riot, according to the Department of Justice, including 47 from Kansas and Missouri. So far, 943 of those defendants have pleaded guilty, choosing not to face trial when the government had mounds of video footage showing the people who entered the restricted grounds of the Capitol that day.
But there have been holdouts. People who insisted they were merely exercising their First Amendment rights and were willing to face a jury of Washington residents to prove it. People who were adamant in interviews before sentencing that they had done nothing wrong. People who have accused the government of holding them as political prisoners.
For nearly three years, Chrestman was among them.
Chrestman’s story
After he was arrested in February 2021 , the unemployed union sheet metal worker was held without bail in the District of Columbia jail along with other Jan. 6 defendants, who were kept separated from the rest of the federal jail population.
At a July 2021 hearing, U.S. District Judge Timothy Kelly denied Chrestman’s request to be released from custody pending trial, saying that “Mr. Chrestman was much more — much, much more — than someone who merely cheered on the violence or who entered the Capitol after others cleared the way.”
Kelly went through a laundry list of Chrestman’s alleged actions on the day of the riot that he said was captured by dozens of photos and videos: Chrestman wielding an ax handle, encouraging the crowd to storm the Capitol — he led raucous chants of “Whose house? Our house!” — and confronting law enforcement, telling an officer that “You shoot and I’ll take your f------ ass out!”
“In a world in which January 6 has passed but yet the notion in our politics that the 2020 presidential election was stolen and is still a live issue, those statements do not reflect someone for whom the fight is over … they reflect someone who is focused on the future and for whom the fight continues,” Kelly said.
Inside the prison walls, Chrestman became part of the J6 Prison Choir, a group of defendants being held in the D.C. jail who gathered each night to sing “The Star-Spangled Banner.” The song turned into a track called “Justice for All,” is interspersed with the voice of Trump reciting the Pledge of Allegiance and is played at Trump rallies across the country.
Outside the prison, a group of loyal Trump supporters began coalescing in support of the Jan. 6 defendants — a good number of them military veterans — whom they saw as patriots, freedom fighters and heroes, not criminals. Conservative members of Congress occasionally visited their rallies.
As trials began, supporters could often be found wandering the halls of the U.S. District Courthouse for the District of Columbia. Groups would stop by to listen in on the proceedings or would offer support to families as judges issued verdicts and sentences. Families began sharing information about legal strategies.
Raising thousands
Meanwhile, families and supporters began raising money, establishing fundraisers to help pay for legal fees and other expenses as the cases wound their way through federal court.
Supporters also launched centralized fundraising entities, like the Stand in the Gap Foundation , which held a fundraiser for the Jan. 6 defendants at a Trump golf course in August, according to the New York Times. And on the Fourth of July weekend in 2023, supporters held a J6 Truth and Light Freedom Festival in Rogersville, Missouri, a town of about 4,000 near Springfield. Organizers said the event was to honor and raise money for those charged in the Capitol riot.
“These donors, in their heart of hearts, and in their minds, believe that God is on their side and that these people were righteous patriots doing their civic duty by storming the Capitol and trying to stop the vote and arrest what they perceived as corrupt politicians,” said Daryl Johnson, a former senior analyst with the Department of Homeland Security.
Chrestman’s family was among those who started raising money. They created an account on GiveSendGo , a Christian crowdfunding platform, under the name “Help Patriot Father.” On the page, his family said Chrestman had lost his home — which was under foreclosure before his arrest — and that he was struggling to keep up with costs at the commissary.
“As of June 11, 2021, Billy is still being held in the DC Gulag,” his family posted. “Still no trial date, status hearings have been delayed for months. We are praying this ends soon. Since Billy has been incarcerated as a policial(sic) prisoner, he has missed his kids’ birthdays, graduations, and countless other celebrations.”
As of Tuesday, Chrestman had received 2,143 donations. One anonymous donor gave $5,000; another sent $2,500 — both in the past two months. Eight donors have given $1,000 each.
His total contributions far surpass those of most Jan. 6 defendants.
“I’m sorry you had to be a victim of these evil globalists,” wrote a donor using the name “Along the Way,” who gave $50. “God bless and keep you. UHURU!” The Swahili word, meaning “freedom,” has been appropriated by the Proud Boys as a slogan.
“I hope to God that you get more than you have asked for so you can start again with a firm foundation,” wrote CherylB, who gave $20. “We are all so sorry for the injustice you have endured and for the loss of your home and other valuables.
“I believe Trump will make some of this right for all of you who have been political prisoners in the Land of the Free. Let’s get him back in the Oval, okay?”
Chrestman’s mother said last year that she didn’t believe her son would get out of jail any time soon unless Trump pardoned him. In an April 14, 2023, interview on The Political Prisoner Podcast , a show produced by Look Ahead America, Susan Moser acknowledged that Chrestman was a Proud Boy but said he did nothing wrong on Jan. 6.
“He went there to listen to President Trump speak — very patriotic,” she said. “We all, as well as him, were devastated by the election results … He got kind of caught up with the crowd and, you know, walked to the Capitol.
“He broke no windows, no doors, he didn’t do any damage. He didn’t hurt anybody, he just walked in. And because he was a Proud Boy, they targeted him. Now, it’s not illegal to be a Proud Boy, you know. I mean, he was a Boy Scout. Is it illegal to be a Boy Scout?”
Moser said her son told her he would not agree to any plea deals with the government.
“Billy said absolutely no way is he doing that … He said no, he did not go there at the urging of President Trump.”
Chrestman pleaded guilty in October 2023 to obstruction of an official proceeding and threatening a federal officer, both felonies. He was sentenced in January to just over 4 ½ years, given credit for the time he’d already served.
After his sentencing
After his sentencing, Chrestman was moved from the D.C. jail to a prison in Texas. In July, he was sent to a halfway house in the Kansas City area. Early last week, the federal Bureau of Prisons’ website listed his release date as Oct. 24. But on Friday, it said he was no longer in Bureau of Prisons custody as of Oct. 9.
The BOP did not respond to requests for comment on why Chrestman was released early. The scope of one of the two felonies he pleaded guilty to — obstruction of an official proceeding — was limited in June by the U.S. Supreme Court.
Despite pleading guilty and a tearful apology during his sentencing, Chrestman did not appear to believe that he had done anything wrong.
While in custody, Chrestman spoke multiple times by phone with The Gateway Pundit, a far-right online site. In one interview last year, he said the popularity of the J6 Prison Choir video shows “the support that Trump still has and the fact that most people absolutely don’t believe the lies.”
“They do not believe that he lost that election,” Chrestman said. “Are you kidding me? People really think Joe Biden won that damned election? No, that was stolen.”
He said the Capitol riot was a “setup.”
“We went down there just to protest,” he said. “That was a setup, 100 percent … They had agents at the Capitol that day, in the crowd, instigating.”
In an interview last fall with The Gateway Pundit, Chrestman blamed Antifa and said he’d been labeled a white supremacist and Nazi and had been blackballed by the sheet metal union.
“I’m probably the saddest excuse for a Nazi that you’ve ever seen,” he said.
Chrestman said he’d lost everything.
“To be honest with you, the only thing I have left is my family,” he said. “ ... I really need a hand up. I don’t have a place to go when I get out of here. I’m not sure where I’m going, my wife had to move to another state.”
Other area Jan. 6 defendants with fundraising campaigns include Christopher Kuehne, formerly of Olathe, a U.S. Marine Corps veteran who was indicted with Chrestman and two other area Proud Boys. He pleaded guilty in September 2023 to obstruction of law enforcement during civil disorder and was sentenced in February to 75 days in prison and 24 months of supervised release. His GiveSendGo site had taken in $73,936 from 1,109 donors as of Tuesday.
And a site for John George Todd III , a Blue Springs Marine Corps veteran sentenced in June to five years in prison for injuring an officer during the riot and several other charges, has raised $7,302 from 160 donors.
Johnson, the former Homeland Security analyst, said he wasn’t surprised to see the vast community of support for the Jan. 6 defendants. Trump has also fanned the flames, Johnson said, with his talk of pardoning the defendants.
“So this is all just a manifestation of how the far right and the Republican Party have portrayed these people,” he said. “They’re trying to rewrite history by glossing over the violent nature of this and the root of it. They’re trying to spin it to make it look like this is a righteous, patriotic thing that these people did.
“This shows the base of support these people have. And they’re almost elevated to celebrity status.”
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