Doug Jensen’s interview with FBI revealed in newly released transcript
For subscribers: Read the transcript of Doug Jensen’s interview with the FBI
From secret messages passed at former President George H.W. Bush.’s funeral to Q sightings at Michael Jackson’s Neverland ranch, Doug Jensen’s first conversation with federal investigators was steeped in the alternate reality of conspiracy forums.
The Des Moines resident is set to be tried in September on charges stemming from his role in the Jan. 6, 2021, riot at the U.S. Capitol, where a crowd of supporters of President Donald Trump went to try to prevent the certification of Joe Biden’s presidential election victory.
Jensen achieved instant notoriety when he was caught on video during the riot, chasing and confronting a police officer inside the Capitol while wearing a distinctive QAnon T-shirt.
Two days later, as news outlets aired the video, Jensen showed up unannounced at the Des Moines police station, saying he had walked the six miles from his home. The resulting interview with two FBI agents, made available in full for the first time Friday in a transcript filed in court by prosecutors, played a key role in his subsequent arrest.
The interview lasted several hours, with multiple breaks, as Jensen explained that “I’m all about a revolution” and talked extensively about the QAnon conspiracy theory. Over the course of the conversation, he took the two agents deep into the details of QAnon, the belief that then-President Donald Trump was leading a secret war against child sex traffickers who would be arrested in an event known as “the storm.”
It was a cause he said he associated with because he had been molested from ages 7 to 14.
He told the agents that at one point shortly before the riot, Trump began a speech with “my fellow Americans” — a common phrase in politics — that to him sounded like a call to arms.
“Q always told us that when he says, ‘my fellow Americans,’ the storm is here, that’s when we’re supposed to go,” he said. “That’s when we’re supposed to do anything. Well, he started off that speech a couple weeks ago with ‘my fellow Americans.’ That’s all he had to do.”
More:Here’s where the cases stand against 6 Iowans charged over participating in the U.S. Capitol riot
To Jensen, it also was a hidden signal when a flag on Bush’s casket was wrinkled, and he said Bush’s family supposedly received secret letters during his funeral.
Jensen said that he’d been a lifelong Democrat, and had voted for Barack Obama in both of his presidential bids. He’d planned to vote for Hillary Clinton in 2016, he said, but said he was shocked when Wikileaks published a trove of emails and other materials from close Clinton associates that he believed showed she posed a grave threat to the nation.
As he researched further, he told the agents, he was persuaded by reports alleging kidnappings and other misconduct connected to the Clinton Foundation.
“I sat and looked at that stuff, I went through all kinds of stuff and I was like, oh, my God, and then along comes Q,” he said, according to the transcript, referring to the supposed Trump White House insider behind the QAnon movement who posted frequent messages about the secret struggle against the pedophile ring and coming mass arrests.
He said he became an ardent supporter of Trump, using the numerous social media platforms on which he was active to try to persuade people to re-elect him in 2020. When he spoke with investigators on Jan. 8, Jensen still expected the imminent arrest of Vice President Mike Pence and other senior officials involved in certifying the Electoral College vote for Biden.
Previously:Iowa Jan. 6 suspect Doug Jensen seeks to have case moved, interview with FBI tossed out
“I think we’re right now at the start of our 10 days in darkness,” he said.
He said he believed Trump was the true victor in the 2020 election.
“He won. Why can’t we just have him as the president for four years?” Jensen said. “I don’t understand why that was so hard.”
He acknowledged some people “think I’m insane, and I don’t believe I am. I believe everything, you know, 100 percent.”
He said that when he got word of a planned gathering of Trump supporter in Washington on Jan. 6 to oppose Biden’s Electoral Vote certification, he took time off his job at a masonry company and drove to Washington.
Joining the crowd that marched to the Capitol following a Trump rally, he said he wore his QAnon shirt because “I basically intended on being the poster boy, and it really worked out.”
“I didn’t — did not plan it. It just happened, you know?” he said of entering the Capitol. “It — I — I always am that guy. I got be at the front of the concert. I got to be the front, you know, I got to get to the front of that crowd. So that kicked in I guess.”
He said he entered through a window.
“I felt like I was being told to come on, like I was being led,” he said.
He said he was upset that he had been depicted in TV news reports as a terrorist.
“I’m not a terrorist. I am patriotic,” he said. “I am for America, and I feel like we are being taken over by communist China, you know, and the whole Russian collusion was fake. I don’t know what the deal with Russia is, but I don’t know, Vladimir Putin, he seems to be like a decent person, but I could be crazy, you know.”
Asked by an agent if he had any regrets about being part of the crowd in the Capitol, he said, “I don’t know. It depends on if the outcome I wanted happens, then it would have been worth it. But if nothing happens except for negativity from this, and I’m a rioter, then, yeah, I completely regret it …”
The interview ended with him agreeing to turn over his phone to the agents and giving them his passwords.
Three days later, he was arrested.
Prosecutors filed the transcript alongside their reply to Jensen’s motion to suppress all evidence from the interview. Jensen argued that he had been effectively in custody while he talked to the FBI agents, and that investigators should have read him his Miranda rights.
In response, prosecutors point out that Jensen had come to the police station of his own volition, was told repeatedly that he was free to go, and in fact was given a ride home after the conversation ended. Jensen’s statements were voluntary and uncoerced, prosecutors said in Friday’s filings.
William Morris covers courts for the Des Moines Register. He can be contacted at wrmorris2@registermedia.com, 715-573-8166 or on Twitter at @DMRMorris.
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