WASHINGTON — Brandon Fellows was busy taunting D.C. pedestrians from a window high above them on Thursday when he briefly paused to talk about why he believes Donald Trump will pardon him immediately upon beginning his second term as president.
“Yeah! Trump won! Their body, our choice!” Fellows shouted at one confused passerby in D.C.’s Navy Yard district, before HuffPost approached him.
Fellows, whose face was squished into the maybe five-inch gap beneath the building’s open window, is currently on probation for his role in the Jan. 6, 2021 insurrection at the U.S. Capitol. He served three years in prison, and is presently barred from going beyond a 50-mile radius of D.C.
(He can in fact leave the building, which is where he said he lives, but at one point explained that staying inside “protects me from the unhinged liberals if they get mad at me.”)
HuffPost watched him yell down comments at a handful of people walking by. He initially trolled HuffPost, too, shouting something celebratory about Trump winning the election before complimenting this reporter’s shirt, a sports jersey for the Washington Spirit women’s soccer team. This did not compute, so HuffPost went back moments later to talk.
“I’m the only D.C. J6 defendant here,” he said, referring to being bound to D.C.
Fellows, who is from Schenectady, New York, hasn’t been particularly welcome in the nation’s capital: Someone punched him in the face in July at a D.C. restaurant.
In June, the Trump loyalist was escorted out of a congressional hearing on the Covid pandemic, during which he made faces on-camera behind Anthony Fauci, the former longtime director of the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases, as the doctor described receiving death threats.
“I don’t want to live here, but they forced me to live here,” Fellows complained Thursday. “I want to go back home. I want to go back to New York.”
Fellows, 30, seemed eager to have someone to talk to. He asked multiple times during the 10-minute exchange to be tagged on social media ― before and after he knew he was talking to a journalist. And he said he feels confident about Trump pardoning him and the hundreds of other Jan. 6 rioters sentenced to prison.
“The rest of us are coming out soon,” Fellows said with a smile.
“He said day one he’s pardoning us,” he continued. “I’m not violent, so I’m definitely getting pardoned. For misdemeanor stuff. The felonies are the ones where they actually hold you in jail.”
Fellows was sentenced on felony and misdemeanor charges. During the Jan. 6 attack, he climbed into the Capitol building through a shattered window and stood on broken furniture waving a “Trump 2020” flag, according to the Justice Department. After filming a rioter ramming the Senate Parliamentarian’s door with a cane, he walked into an Oregon senator’s private office, put his feet up on a conference table and smoked weed.
On Thursday, Fellows, who appeared to be filming the people he harassed, seemed to be trying to be intentionally provocative.
Out of nowhere, he said he thought the Civil War “was beneficial for the country” and that lives would have been saved on Jan. 6 “if an actual insurrection took place.” These comments just hung in the air.
“This is my city now,” he interjected at one point. “Because gender is fluid here, I’m a female now.”
He said he’s concerned about the national debt, and falsely accused former President Barack Obama of increasing the debt “more than all presidents combined.” (Total debt did rise more under Obama over his two terms in office than during Trump’s one term. But it wasn’t anywhere near the levels of all presidents combined, and during the Trump era, the national debt went way up.)
He said he hopes Trump uses his second term to cut off money to Ukraine, to close the U.S.-Mexico border and to do “a little cleansing” at the Justice Department. He specifically said he hopes Trump clears people out at the FBI.
Fellows may have had more thoughts to share, but HuffPost had to get going. He seemed rather lonely up there, speaking from his barely visible apartment window. “I wish it opened more,” he said at one point, his face pressed into the gap.
He reiterated he’s the only Jan. 6 defendant forced to live in D.C.
“I don’t have family here,” said Fellows. “Fortunately, I have tons of supporters out there and I’ve got fan mail from every other state, and even other countries.”
As HuffPost headed off, he added, “If you post this, tag me on X.”