Pardoned Jan. 6 Rioter Jake Lang Arrested After Driving Onto Minneapolis Sidewalk

By Mars Vega-Kaplan · August 23, 2026

Opinion

Pardoned Jan. 6 Rioter Jake Lang Arrested After Driving Onto Minneapolis Sidewalk

Jake Lang called it a “peaceful freedom of speech rally.” He announced it weeks in advance, lined up a guest, and rolled into downtown Minneapolis on Saturday with two vehicles and six companions. Then both vehicles drove onto a sidewalk outside City Hall, straight toward a crowd of people.

So much for peaceful.

Minneapolis police arrested Lang and everyone in both vehicles on probable cause riot. Three officers were injured. One went to the hospital. Mace was deployed by both Lang’s group and counter-protesters. The vehicles were impounded. Four people face charges including riot, fifth-degree assault, disorderly conduct, and obstructing legal process. Interim Police Chief Bill Peterson said the sidewalk driving was “the primary law that was broken to start the whole thing off.”

Pardoned Jan. 6 rioter Jake Lang arrested after driving vehicles onto Minneapolis sidewalk.

Here is the part that should make every person in this country furious: Jake Lang has done this before. He stormed the Capitol on January 6. He was pardoned. And then he got right back to it, showing up in Minneapolis in January with anti-Muslim rhetoric, and now again in August, driving cars at people on a sidewalk and calling it free speech.

The pardon was not a correction. It was a green light.

Lang even invited Shiloh Hendrix as a guest for this rally. Hendrix was convicted of directing racial slurs at an 8-year-old girl with autism on a Rochester playground. That is who Lang wanted at his “peaceful” event. It tells you everything about what this rally was actually for. It was never about speech. It was about intimidation, about testing how far they could push, about finding out whether a pardon means consequences are permanently off the table.

Downtown Minneapolis City Hall where vehicles drove onto the sidewalk.

Mayor Jacob Frey said it plainly: “If you’re going to come in here, you’re going to drive on the sidewalk, you’re going to incite a riot, and you’re going to be a problem for people’s safety, then you’re going to get arrested.” He had urged residents to ignore Lang’s event. People didn’t ignore it. They showed up. They pushed back. Counter-protesters broke through police lines and reached Lang. Video shows him doused in liquid, clinging to a giant white cross before police took him into custody.

The community in Minneapolis did what communities do when far-right agitators show up looking for a fight. They refused to be a backdrop for Lang’s content.

But the structural problem remains. A man who participated in the most violent attack on the Capitol in modern history received a pardon, walked free, and escalated again. The people of Minneapolis are left to deal with the consequences of a decision made in Washington, by people who will never have to stand on that sidewalk.

Every pardon of a January 6 rioter is a bet that they’ll quietly disappear. Jake Lang just collected on that bet. The question now is whether anyone in power will stop making it.

Sources

Editor’s note. I suppose we all have to wonder whether the law enforcement officers who were injured by a man who was already pardoned for a much worse offense are the ones who should be worried about who gets to make the rules, or if it's just a matter of which side is currently driving the car. (W.K.)