Pardoned J6 Protestor Says He Has Proof Police Incited Riots At Capitol

Virginia Beach resident Jacob Hiles is a charter boat captain arrested for crimes related to the protests on J6.  He ultimately plead guilty to one misdemeanor count of parading, demonstrating, or picketing in a Capitol building. In exchange for Hiles’ guilty plea, the Department of Justice dropped the remaining three misdemeanor charges against him.  He was given two years probation.

However, Hiles says there’s a lot more to the story that he could not tell the public until he was officially pardoned by Donald Trump last week. 

The boat captain tells a local NBC affiliate, WAVY-TV 10 that he has video proof of capitol police acting to incite the riots.  At least 9 minutes of his video is posted to WAVY-TV 10, though it appears to be heavily edited.  

“I have several videos from Jan. 6 — I have over an hour of video that I shot on Jan. 6…It shows all sorts of things. I have videos that show Capitol Police inciting inciting riots by shooting. They were walking through the crowds with a super soaker-style water gun that was full of bear spray.”

“I have [on video] a man who who had been sprayed by a Capitol Police officer…I’m standing right beside him and he walks up to the Capitol Police officer and says, ‘Hey, why did you spray me with with pepper spray?’ The guy … said he was a Vietnam veteran and he’s never done anything but serves the country.”

Not only that, Hiles also asserts that federal agents threatened him with long term imprisonment if he took those videos to the media or posted them to the internet.

“It was what I was told in August of 2021…And in a Zoom meeting with Brandon Merriman, who is the special agent in charge of Jan. 6, and he’s the guy you saw do the interview about 60 Minutes about Jan. 6.

In a Zoom meeting with Brandon Merriman in August of 2021, he told me that if I go to the media and start talking about Jan. 6, if my videos find the media or the Internet, that I would, quote, ‘spend the rest of my life in prison.’ I asked for what [and] he said. ‘I’ll find something.’” 

An attorney for Hiles believes that this exchange with the special agent was recorded, which means it could now be accessed by the Trump Administration. 

Hiles testimony supports previous claims by J6 protesters that the Capitol Police and federal agents incited the violence by attacking the peaceful protesters with tear gas and rubber bullets.  Video clips from the event taken from body cam footage and protester footage show police engaged in harassing the crowd with munitions well before the protesters attacked the building or the officers.  

Happy January 6th Fake Fed Insurrection Day!
Never forget:
1. There was no riot at the capitol until the capitol police incited the crowd by firing flash bang grenades, tear gas and rubber bullets at them
2. Not 1 person was ever charged with insurrection#Jan6 #PatriotDay pic.twitter.com/w6fxssCt8z

— Evan Dyer (@EvanLeeDyer) January 6, 2025

Videos also show police accidentally gassing themselves, which forced them to retreat closer to the building.  Officials originally blamed protester violence for their retreat. 

Body cam video
Capitol police tear gassed themselves and abandoned their posts on January 6th. pic.twitter.com/Y9iXyVTPFM

— Big Fish (@BigFish3000) March 16, 2023

The official J6 narrative reiterated to the public for years was, in fact, a lie.  The tale of an unhinged crowd of “far-right insurrectionists” hellbent on violently disrupting the 2020 elections and spurred on by Donald Trump as a would-be dictator?  That never happened.  It is yet another fallacy added to a long list of fallacies perpetrated by Democrats and establishment bureaucrats to perpetually demonize conservatives, likely as a means to secure election supremacy for years to come. 

Obviously, they failed. 

The media and the Biden Administration constructed a house of cards around the same repeated handful of carefully cherry-picked J6 video clips.  They only show what occurred after police had already attacked and enraged protesters.  What they never show is what happened to make the crowd so angry in the first place.  Those videos also don’t show what happened behind the scenes, including the intimidation that was apparently used by federal agents to keep arrested protesters quiet.