'Enthusiastic' Jan. 6 rioter with white supremacist tattoos cites Black 'best friend' in begging judge for leniency

Clockwise from left: Brian Jackson with hands raised and making an “OK” gesture, which is considered to be shorthand for “white power,” outside the U.S. Capitol on Jan. 6, 2021 (Department of Justice); photo of Jackson and his “best friend” (Jackson court filing); the pole hurled by Jackson into police on Jan. 6 (Department of Justice).

Before Brian Scott Jackson of Texas was sentenced on Tuesday to roughly three years in prison for assaulting police on Jan. 6, 2021, his attorneys urged a federal judge in a July sentencing memorandum to disregard the white supremacist tattoos on their client’s body or the text messages in evidence where Jackson employed racial slurs to describe police in Washington, D.C.

Instead, they asked a judge to consider that Jackson couldn’t afford to have the tattoos removed and this was particularly painful for him in light of the fact that his “best friend is African American.”

His attorneys also entered a photo of Jackson with his Black friend at that man’s wedding.

That same line of argument leapt off the page and was repeated in court on Tuesday when Jackson’s defense attorneys appeared with the 48-year-old man before U.S. District Judge Rudolph Contreras for sentencing.

Jackson’s brother, Adam Lejay Jackson, pleaded guilty to assaulting police on Jan. 6 in September and he was sentenced to 36 months of probation to be served over 52 consecutive weekends.

Former U.S. Capitol Police Officer Harry Dunn, who was not assaulted by either one of the Jackson brothers on Jan. 6 but attended the hearing as a public observer, told Law&Crime in a phone interview that Contreras seemed largely unimpressed with Jackson’s invocation of the “all too common, I have a Black friend defense,” Dunn said, noting that this was a light paraphrase of the judge’s own remarks.

Historically, Jackson has said his tattoos are the byproduct of his time previously incarcerated in Texas where prisons were “overrun by competing gangs” who forced him to choose a side to survive.

But the tattoos weren’t the only point of friction during Tuesday’s hearing.

“What caught me off guard was the defendant’s lawyer making it seem that throwing a sharp flagpole wasn’t a big deal and that he almost blamed the officer for it,” Dunn said.

For example, Dunn said, when the prosecutor shared an exhibit that showed an officer on Jan. 6 being attacked without his riot gear on, Dunn said Jackson’s defense attorney asked the court a question.

“If that person wasn’t in riot gear, why are they there in that riot?” Dunn recalled the attorney saying.

This, he said, even prompted Contreras to remark aloud that it sounded like the defense might be “victim blaming” or on the verge of it,

“It was just unbelievable,” Dunn reflected.

Jackson’s sentencing hearing was sparsely attended save for Dunn and roughly a dozen or so of Jackson’s family members, friends or supporters, the former police officer said. He noted that Michelle “Micki” Witthoeft, arrested for assaulting a protester last May and the mother of deceased Jan. 6 rioter Ashli Babbitt, was also in attendance.

Dunn said he went because he believes “it is important to pay attention whenever people are being held accountable for their actions” tied to Jan. 6.

Jackson’s lawyers did not immediately return a request for comment to Law&Crime.

Though prosecutors sought 52 months, Contreras sentenced Jackson to serve just 37 months in prison plus three years of supervised release.

The U.S. Attorney’s Office confirmed to Law&Crime that this includes an obligation that Jackson serve 60 hours of community service within the first year of release. He is also ordered to pay $2,000 in restitution.

Officers were crammed inside the tunnel like sardines when the Jackson brothers and others descended on them on Jan. 6.

Left: Convicted rioter Adam Jackson, circled in yellow, makes an “OK” gesture with his hands outside of the Capitol on Jan. 6, 2021. Brian Jackson appears circled in red. Right: Adam Jackson uses a stolen police riot shield to push against a line of police officers defending the Capitol on Jan. 6 (Department of Justice).

They, like many others defending the Capitol, endured a barrage of relentless attacks from the mob and the flagpole that Brian Jackson wielded was just one of many items utilized against them.

Rioters used heavy objects, both blunt and sharp; they doused police with chemical irritants; and, as Law&Crime recently reported , some rioters even “stomped” on police from above after clinging to the top of the tunnel’s walls.

In his sentencing memorandum , Brian Jackson chalked up his actions at the Capitol to being drunk and he also described the flagpole he threw to assault police as “flimsy” and “light” wood.

He said he “panicked” when he saw his brother run toward police in the tunnel and went to go help him. Brian Jackson also said he wanted to “get their attention without causing any harm,” his attorneys wrote in July, adding numerous times that Jackson was remorseful nonetheless for his conduct.

But prosecutors told the judge that Brian Jackson was a “ready, willing, and enthusiastic participant in the chaos” in their own sentencing memorandum and again in court on Tuesday.

After the Jackson brothers and a friend traveled from Texas to Washington, D.C., they attended the “Stop the Steal” rally and returned to their hotel room. But after watching rioting erupting on a television, prosecutors said they headed toward the Capitol to get in on the action.

Prosecutors said once on Capitol grounds, the men watched the violence and began actively “hoping that rioters clad in tactical gear would make entry into the Capitol so they could follow.”

One recorded video from Jan. 6 near the Capitol’s west plaza caught Jackson’s brother asking rioters heavily outfitted in tactical military gear if they were going inside.

“Hey you know what — if one goes, we all go. We’re waitin’ on y’all. What are we doing standing here?” Adam Jackson was heard saying, prosecutors noted.

But when they could wait no more, prosecutors told Contreras, Adam Jackson grabbed a police shield and rammed it into the police line at the mouth of the tunnel. Just seconds later, Brian Jackson chucked the spear-like flagpole in the same direction.

He was then seen in footage from the tunnel screaming and taunting police while often using an “OK” hand gesture which prosecutors noted is a symbol commonly associated with the white power movement.

Some of the text messages from Jackson obtained by prosecutors and highlighted to the judge before sentencing included one where Brian Jackson told a friend on Jan. 7, 2021, that he “chased a few n——” off the street and that he wouldn’t return to Washington, D.C., where “even all the cops are black.”

Jackson also referred to police defending the Capitol as “traitors.”

As Law&Crime previously reported , an attorney for Adam Jackson once compared Jan. 6 to Black Lives Matter protests.

The post ‘Enthusiastic’ Jan. 6 rioter with white supremacist tattoos cites Black ‘best friend’ in begging judge for leniency first appeared on Law & Crime .