Proud Boys member and decorated combat veteran Joe Biggs says he and other January 6 defendants “did nothing” to deserve years in prison and the loss of their military benefits, arguing that they were framed as domestic terrorists in a political operation designed to “get President Trump.”
Living in a precarious legal and financial state, he finds himself in a unique predicament after receiving a commutation from Trump but lacking a full pardon. He is urging the former president to complete the mission by exonerating the most persecuted individuals from January 6.
From Purple Heart Veteran to “Domestic Terrorist”
During an interview outside the Trump White House, Cara Castronuova highlighted Biggs’ background as a decorated veteran, awarded a Purple Heart, who had to medically retire after several combat tours. According to him, the Justice Department used the Proud Boys trial as the primary strategy to target Trump, portraying him and a select few as the central antagonists of January 6.
Biggs recounted how prosecutors initially aimed for a 36-year prison term, which Judge Kelly reduced to a 17-year sentence—still, as he described, a “life sentence” for someone at 41. He shared that prosecutors privately conceded to defense attorneys that “if the trial was held anywhere but D.C., we would probably win it,” yet proceeded because they believed they could manipulate the jury and severely disadvantage them.
The sedition conviction affected more than just his freedom. Biggs mentioned that being labeled a “domestic terrorist” effectively nullified his military service record. Once the charges were filed, the VA revoked his medical benefits and retirement. Following Trump’s commutation, although he walked out of an Alabama federal prison, Biggs stated the VA expelled him, even escorting him off the property with police. He lamented, “It’s like I no longer even served in the military.”
Solitary Confinement and Alleged Abuse Behind Bars
Biggs described his incarceration as tantamount to torture, exceeding typical pretrial detention experiences. He recounted spending years in severe solitary confinement, confined to a “concrete room” with just “a thin little yoga mat” for bedding. Guards, he claimed, immobilized him with “box cuffs” for “17, 18 hours,” causing his wrists to bleed, and occasionally “hogtied” him on the floor.
Biggs shared that at one point, staff confined him to a windowless closet for 24 hours, taunting him by throwing dog food and barking. In another harrowing incident, he recounted an altercation with a drug-influenced inmate who attempted to “take a bite out of my neck,” resulting in a violent struggle for survival. The continuous violence and seclusion, he explained, forced him to emotionally shut down, impairing his ability to function “like a normal person” after release.
Facing 17 years in a concrete box amounted to pure mental torture for Biggs, who says the only way he stayed sane was by clinging to his faith. He explained that without God he “wouldn’t have made it through there,” describing how constant prayer carried him and how God would “show me little things here and there to let me know that he was there and in control,” which forced him to trust that some purpose still existed beyond the cell walls. Even after release, he says he cannot pass a background check to accompany his eight-year-old daughter on school activities, and she has no health insurance because his VA status and retirement were wiped out with the sedition conviction.
“I had to learn to accept the fact that I might not ever have a future, that I won’t see my daughter graduate from high school, go to college or, you know, get married.”
Biggs: January 6 Was a Protest, Not a Plot
Biggs rejects the “insurrection” narrative outright and insists there was no Proud Boys plot to stop the certification of the 2020 election. He says government investigators had full access to their devices and communications but never found any plan to overthrow the government or disrupt Congress.
According to Biggs, the crowd near the Capitol remained largely peaceful until Capitol Police “started firing into the crowd” and “punching women in the face,” which, he says, triggered a chaotic street fight. “People weren’t rioting because of politics,” he argued, but because of the police response. He also said that during the Proud Boys trial, the government conceded that no officers were killed on January 6, even though the Biden-era narrative repeatedly claimed the opposite.
Biggs contends that the real “setup” came from within the federal government and that January 6 functioned as a “Fed-surrection” used to justify a national crackdown on Trump supporters. He blasted DOJ attorney Jocelyn Ballantine—who, he noted, has previously been cited for misconduct—as emblematic of a “corrupt to the core” prosecutorial class that “destroys innocent people” and still keeps its jobs.
Betrayed by the System—and Waiting on Trump
Though Trump commuted his sentence, Biggs says the job remains unfinished. Without a full pardon, he is still a convicted “seditious conspirator,” locked out of his earned retirement pay, barred from the VA, and functionally unemployable. “When you’re considered a domestic terrorist, no one will hire you,” he told Castronuova.
Biggs emphasized that many of the Proud Boys and Oath Keepers who were denied pardons are veterans in similar limbo—men who “stood up for Trump” and “for the Constitution” only to watch the government “destroy our lives.” He said he has already heard from Veterans Affairs Secretary Doug Collins, who told him “you’ve got to get a pardon” before VA can restore anything, but promised to “get everything back to where it should be immediately” if that happens.
12 innocent J6ers are still considered guilty for crimes the Biden administration committed and republicans aren't doing shit to help them, even though they are military veterans
— Joseph R. Biggs (@BoJiggs) December 19, 2025
Biggs argues that Trump’s return to the White House creates a defining test: either the administration fully confronts what he calls the “kangaroo court” treatment of January 6 defendants, or it leaves the harshest cases to rot under a narrative written by the Biden DOJ and corporate media. He believes the White House should not only issue pardons but bring the remaining J6 political prisoners and commuted defendants to the people.
“The president does have an opportunity this time around to correct history and change the narrative and propaganda around it because, you know, we’re not insurrectionists, we’re not seditionists, you know, we’re not domestic terrorists.”
“It’d be great if they pardon us and brought us to the White House and let us actually talk to the American people and let them understand what actually happened,” he said. Biggs wants Trump to use the January 6 anniversary to tell the country that the protesters were “not insurrectionists, not seditionists, not domestic terrorists,” but citizens who believed the election was stolen and were “railroaded” for saying so.
For Biggs, the stakes are personal and national. He wants a chance to restore his life, provide for his daughter and turn his ordeal into a warning about what he calls a rigged federal justice system that “wins 97 percent of the time” because “it’s set up for you to [lose] all the time.” And he wants the president he backed to prove that loyalty runs both ways.
“We were loyal to them,” Biggs said of the Trump administration. “We all sat there and did the time like real men, and we would like to be taken care of so we can take care of our families. It’s time to do the right thing.”
Watch Joe Biggs full interview on LindellTV:
