When Nashville real estate broker and one-time House candidate Stewart Parks was convicted on Jan. 6 riot charges of trespassing and theft and sentenced to eight months in the Memphis Federal Correctional Institute, he expected the worst.
“When I went in, the plan was I was just gonna keep my head down low and good time my way out,” Parks, 31, said. “I wasn't gonna tell anybody like, ‘Hey, I'm Jan. 6.’”
Parks couldn’t hide his status, though, because when he was handed off to a Mexican American inmate leader to get him situated, the prison guard said, “Hey, he’s Jan. 6.”
Parks told Secrets, “Right then, my thoughts were, ‘Oh, my God, what's going to happen from here? Are there going to be political opposition groups in the prison that are going to make my life hard?’”
Just the opposite happened, Parks said, in a surprising pattern that others convicted of Jan. 6 charges have experienced.
He said prisoners “welcomed me in.” They made “sure I was comfortable and making sure my time in prison wasn't going to be difficult. So, that was a real shock.”
While talking politics in prison was a no-no, gang members of all colors wanted to talk to him about the 2020 election and former President Donald Trump. “I never had a fight or anybody, you know, put my life in danger or say anything insolent or menacing to me because of my involvement with Jan. 6,” Parks said.
He said one key reason is that inmates liked Trump for approving judicial and prison reforms, including the First Step Act. Prisoners also said the Federal Bureau of Prisons ran the facilities better under Trump.
“Things were better during the Trump administration, and the inmates felt it,” Parks said. In fact, it gave him and the few other inmates convicted in the Capitol riots an elevated position of sorts.
Another reason was that some felt Jan. 6 inmates were political prisoners. “They knew I didn’t belong there,” Parks said.
During one walk back to his unit in the prison, he said, “Someone yelled, ‘There’s a patriot, that's a hero.’ And here I am trying to be lowkey, and I just couldn't keep my head down because, you know, somebody was always yelling and pointing out that they were excited about me being Jan. 6, and they talked positive about the other inmates. I never once heard the inmates in the prison down anybody Jan. 6.”
It was quite a different scene a year ago, when he was convicted by U.S. District Court Judge Amit Mehta. As with others charged in the riots to protest allegations of election fraud and the Electoral College election of President Joe Biden, Parks was handled like a traitor.
“In Washington, D.C., it was very hostile,” he said.
Parks said he wants to appeal his conviction and is eager to see if Trump will make good on his promise to pardon nonviolent Jan. 6 cases should he win in November.
Unlike some Jan. 6 convicts, Parks hasn’t changed his support for Trump or belief that the 2020 election was tampered with.
While he has returned to running his real estate business, Parks said he is also giving speeches about his experience and urging voters to stay alert for ballot and election fraud.
He believes that Trump is ahead in the polls and will win. He said that if Trump doesn’t, “there will be mass anger like Jan. 6. Yeah, it’s just the nation knows we cannot have another four years of [Vice President Kamala] Harris.”
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What’s more, if Harris does win, Parks predicted that the protests at the Capitol will be even bigger than on Jan. 6, 2021. “The whole nation would be there if there was another call for a peaceful gathering,” Parks said.
In fact, he’d riot again. “Freedom is worth dying for,” he said.
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