Texas Man Sentenced to Prison for Battling Cops on January 6th Begs for Money to "Stop Babies from Doing Drugs" in Bizarre Video

     Just looking at the screenshot I took of the video you probably clicked here to read about, I'm sure you can tell this is going to be a wild one. I'm also sure you can tell what an absolute gem of a human being Joshua Lollar is. He was one of the earlier as well as one of the more interesting January 6th cases. An Army veteran who served in Iraq from 2001 to 2007, Lollar drove from Texas to Arlington, Virginia, with an AR-15, which he ultimately left at his hotel before heading to Washington, D.C. Wearing a bulletproof vest, a gas mask, and other tactical gear, he made his way into the Capitol rotunda and battled cops. Prosecutors described him as a "Weebles Wobble" toy, wobbling but not falling down as he was pepper sprayed but continued to push against a line of police officers. Lollar posted during the insurrection and after both text and video bragging about his involvement in the violence that took that day.

     Released on a $50,000 bond, Lollar initially pleaded not guilty and asked for a jury trial to be set. However, he eventually pleaded guilty and spent a considerable amount of time cooperating with the government. In exchange for his guilty to plea to obstruction of an official proceeding, a felony, a charge of assaulting law enforcement and numerous related misdemeanors were dismissed. Still, his family, including his father, Grover Lollar, continued to defend Joshua, saying simply that his son was not a terrorist but went to attend a rally and got caught up in the moment. Interestingly enough, aside from a jab at fact checkers by Grover, neither he nor his wife of more than 53 years, Brenda, appear to be very political. She likes gardening and Grover, also a decorated veteran from Vietnam, likes blues music. 

Lollar uploaded multiple videos from Iraq on YouTube in 2006 and 2007

     So, how did Joshua Lollar wind up involved in the most politically-charged violent crime of all time? The judge noted, the DOJ acknowledged, and Grover claimed that Joshua has a history of mental health issues that would make him more prone to violence and misinformation, and a video Lollar posted in October 2022, just about a week before the midterms, seems to confirm that. The video, titled "United Stand," starts off with Lollar, with a distinct Texas drawl, introducing himself as a single father. Clad in a white t-shirt and having lost his hair in the nearly two years since he stormed the Capitol, he says he is reaching out to "brothers and sisters" in his community and around the world to "right some wrongs." "This is bigger than me... this is about securing our future," he says. "Our babies are out here dying in these streets... being corrupted by drugs."

     A man who was charged with assaulting law enforcement and who pleaded guilty to trying to overturn and steal the results of an election says he doesn't want his kids to grow up in a world where it's ok to steal, kill, or hurt one another. The man who pleaded guilty to a felony for political violence implores everyone to "come together as a people and make a stand." He asked for donations for the "United Stand Foundation" to build community centers, create jobs for fathers, and "keep fathers out of jail for non-violent offenses, victimless crimes." This line gets me. He seems to be implying that he doesn't belong in jail, in spite of the fact that he assaulting law enforcement and that his crime had millions of victims, the people he tried to disenfranchise.

     Lollar could not do this alone, he boldly declared. He, speaking into his phone in his white t-shirt in what appears to be his bedroom, was going to be reaching out to religious figures as well as (ironically) political and law enforcement figures to try to solve these problems. The conservative fixation on the treatment of January 6th prisoners is laughable to me. They are treated horribly because they are treated just like all the other prisoners in America, and conservatives who have decried prison reform as some sort of liberal "soft-on-crime" policy for decades are now calling for it because their foot soldiers don't like the inside of a jail cell.

     Reinforcing what appeared to be a growing sense of a victim complex in this video, he says that the government has too much power and is passing laws to give themselves more power. He never cites a specific statute, but says that the government should be fighting "real crime; getting drugs off our streets," as if there aren't multiple federal agencies (who, according to Lollar, have too much power already) dedicated to just that. He's not against the police, he says (except, apparently, for January 6th), but he's against "locking up our fathers, our brothers for non-violent offenses." Joshua Lollar never explicitly states it, but, because he prefaced the video with introducing himself as a single father and because he makes such a point about fighting "real crime," the video and the foundation seemed to be an attempt to turn his case into something bigger than it is.

     His apparent feeling that he didn't deserve prison didn't help him before Judge Tanya Chutkan, who is now overseeing the criminal trial of Donald Trump in Washington, D.C. Chutkan believed his military service should be considered, but that it "cut both ways," and I couldn't agree more. As a public servant, Lollar should have known better, while his military service and Purple Heart are praiseworthy. The DOJ asked for 46 months in prison, but Chutkan showed Lollar some relative mercy by her standards, probably because of his obvious mental health issues, and gave him 30 months (2.5 years) in prison. He is set to be released from the Federal Medical Center at Fort Worth, a prison that deals with male inmates with special physical and mental health concerns, in May 2025. 

     I hope Joshua Lollar gets the treatment he needs in prison to become a functioning member of society, but his refusal to take responsibility for his actions makes that seem unlikely. He disgraced his uniform, failed his family, and shocked a nation with his actions and yet has still emerged thinking that he is the victim.