What Kash Patel Doesn’t Want the Senate to Know About the ‘J6 Prison Choir’
Several singers in the choir’s track he produced assaulted cops on January 6th.
LAST WEEK, SENATOR THOM TILLIS (R-N.C.), a member of the Senate Judiciary Committee, became agitated over Democrats’ questioning of Pam Bondi, President Donald Trump’s nominee to serve as attorney general. The Democrats on the committee wanted to know if Bondi would approve of Trump’s pardons for January 6th rioters if they were granted to those who assaulted cops.
“I was the last member out of the Senate on January the 6th. I walked past a lot of law enforcement officers, excuse me, who were injured,” Tillis said. “I find it hard to believe that the president of the United States, or you, would look at facts that were used to convict the violent people on January the 6th and say it was just an intemperate moment.” Tillis described the basis for the Democrats’ questioning as an “absurd and unfair hypothetical.”
On January 20, Trump’s first day back in office, that “absurd and unfair hypothetical” became a reality. Trump pardoned nearly 1,600 people charged or convicted of January 6th–related crimes, including hundreds of rioters who were charged with assaulting or obstructing law enforcement, while commuting the sentences of fourteen others. More than 170 of these newly pardoned defendants had already “pleaded guilty to assaulting law enforcement,” and 69 had “pleaded guilty to assaulting law enforcement with a dangerous or deadly weapon.”
Tillis and other Senate Republicans now know that Trump has crossed a bright red line. If they want to maintain any semblance of integrity, then they must pause before rushing to confirm Kash Patel, Trump’s nominee to serve as FBI director. That’s because Patel has repeatedly whitewashed January 6th.
The Senate should start by fully investigating Patel’s role in producing and promoting “Justice for All,” a song performed by the so-called “J6 Prison Choir.” Patel has described helping to produce the track, which features a recording of January 6th inmates in a Washington, D.C. jail performing the Star-Spangled Banner. Separate audio of Trump reciting the Pledge of Allegiance was spliced together with their performance to create the single.
Patel aggressively promoted the song, using it to portray January 6th rioters as victims of the American justice system. He described the choir’s members as “political prisoners” who were “incarcerated as a result of their involvement in the January 6, 2021 protest for election integrity.” Patel also told Gateway Pundit, a far-right conspiracy site, that the song was produced by “like-minded Americans who wanted to . . . destroy the two-tier system of justice that is rotting America.”
The identity of the choir members who performed “Justice for All” has always been murky. We reviewed dozens of Patel’s social media posts promoting the track, often with the hashtag #J6PC, as well as several of his media appearances. We could not find any instances in which he identified its performers. And Patel reportedly declined to name the choir’s members when asked by the press.
We now know why: The choir includes violent rioters who assaulted law enforcement officers on January 6th.
Earlier this month, Special Counsel Jack Smith’s office identified six members of the “J6 Prison Choir” in its final report on the 2020 election interference case against Trump. The special counsel’s office describes the choir as a “group of January 6 defendants who, because of their dangerousness, are detained at the District of Columbia jail.”
All six of the January 6th convicts listed in footnote 139 of Smith’s report have pleaded guilty to assaulting law enforcement officers on January 6th and were sentenced to prison. They are: Julian Khater (sentenced to 80 months in prison), Ryan Nichols (63 months), Jorden Mink (51 months), Ronald Sandlin (63 months), Barton Shively (18 months), and James McGrew (78 months).
All six men have now been pardoned by Trump. But the details of the crimes they admittedly committed are all publicly available, including on the Department of Justice’s (DOJ) website and in media reporting. Five of the men—Khater, Mink, McGrew, Sandlin, and Shively—had already pleaded guilty to assaulting law enforcement officers prior to the release of “Justice for All” in early March 2023. Yet Patel did not mention their crimes in the promotional appearances or social media posts we reviewed.
Khater pleaded guilty to spraying U.S. Capitol Police officer Brian Sicknick with pepper spray. Sicknick died of “natural causes” the next day, after suffering two strokes.
Nichols and another defendant participated in the attack at the Capitol’s “Lower West Terrace doors, also known as the Tunnel,” which “was the site of some of the most violent assaults on law enforcement officers on January 6th.” Nichols brought a crowbar and a bullhorn with him to the Capitol. He and another defendant “pushed the crowd against the officers” defending the Tunnel “in synchronized movements, rocking back and forth as the crowd chanted, ‘Heave! Ho!’” Nichols also used a “large red canister of O.C. or pepper spray” to deliver “two streams of spray into the Tunnel, hitting multiple law enforcement officers.” After the attack, Nichols posted a video on Facebook in which he said:
So, yes, I’m calling for violence! And I will be violent! Because I’ve been peaceful and my voice hasn’t been heard, I’ve been peaceful and my vote doesn’t count. I’ve been peaceful and the Court’s [sic] won’t hear me. So you’re f— right, I’m going to be violent now! And I’m here in Washington, D.C. and it just got started. So if you want to know where Ryan Nichols stands, Ryan Nichols stands for violence.
Mink used a “long pole” to “violently and repeatedly strike at the officers at the entrance, hitting their shields at least five times.” Mink also spat “at officers” and then threw “several objects at them—including a traffic cone” and “a large rectangular-shaped object (possibly a step or drawer).”
McGrew “engaged in a series of confrontations with law enforcement officers,” including pushing and striking them. McGrew also “launched” a “wooden handrail with metal brackets attached” towards officers.
Sandlin and another defendant “pushed against officers guarding an exterior door to the Capitol Rotunda, slowly forcing the door open and letting a mob stream inside.” Sandlin then shouted at the officers, “you’re going to die, get out of the way” and “later” grabbed “an officer’s helmet.” Sandlin also “incited others in the mob,” according to the DOJ. Prior to the attack, again according to the DOJ, Sandlin posted a picture of another January 6th defendant “lying on a bed holding a firearm.” Sandlin captioned the post: “My fellow patriot sleeping ready for the boogaloo Jan 6.” As Sandlin “understood at the time,” the term “boogaloo” is a reference “to civil war.”
Shively “assaulted one officer by striking the officer’s hand, and head and shoulder areas,” and “assaulted another officer, grabbing the officer’s jacket and yelling at the officer.”
These are several of the men who sang in the track that Kash Patel helped produce and promote, according to Smith’s report. Before senators vote on Patel’s confirmation, he should be made to identify all the members “J6 Prison Choir” who performed “Justice for All.” The record shows that Patel repeatedly used the song to demonize the criminal justice system.
Patel’s work with the choir to help “destroy the two-tier system of justice that is rotting America.”
PATEL DISCUSSED HIS KEY ROLE in producing and promoting the J6 Prison Choir during a March 10, 2023 appearance on Steve Bannon’s War Room podcast. Patel announced that he was “exclusively” releasing for “the first time ever” the video for the choir’s song “Justice for All.”
“We all know the plight of the Jan. 6 prisoners and their families and how due process has been destroyed for so many of them,” Patel told Bannon. He then explained how he and others helped produce the song.
“We also know, or some of us know, that they sing, the Jan. 6 prisoners themselves sing, the national anthem every night for 700 straight plus nights from the jail themselves,” Patel said. He and others thought it “would be cool” if “we captured that audio” and mixed it with “the greatest president, President Donald J. Trump,” reciting the Pledge of Allegiance. “Then we went to a studio and recorded it, mastered it, and digitized it, and put it out as a song,” Patel added.
Bannon then played the “Justice for All” video, which ends with a card reading: “SUPPORTING CERTAIN PRISONERS DENIED THEIR CONSTITUTIONAL RIGHTS.” After the video finished playing, Bannon asked Patel, “Who is in this choir?” Patel did not name any of the choir’s members—yet he praised their “courageous singing,” saying they exercised their freedom of speech by performing “the national anthem from the D.C. gulag.”
As he went on to promote the song in the weeks that followed, Patel portrayed the J6 Prison Choir as victims of the U.S. justice system. “[‘Justice for All’] was a collaboration between like-minded Americans who wanted to keep the focus on helping to destroy the two-tier system of justice that is rotting America,” Gateway Pundit quoted Patel as saying in a March 21, 2023 post. Patel added that the “net profits” would be used “to financially assist as many Jan. 6 families as we can, and all families of nonviolent offenders will be considered.” (This raises a question: Given that the choir’s members included violent offenders, did any of them, or their families, receive any of the proceeds?)
Patel also repeatedly promoted “Justice for All,” as well as the accompanying video, on his Truth Social account.
In a March 18, 2023 post, Patel announced that “we” were releasing a “limited edition collectors item”—a version of the song on a vinyl record. “Seems timely to fight against a two tier system of justice, now more than ever . . . raising money for J6 fams,” he wrote.
Patel also repeatedly cheered on, and claimed credit for, the song’s success.
“Still crushing it ‘Justice For All’ - that time we knocked Miley Cyrus off her perch.. and Gaga… and Tswift… and everybody else,” Patel wrote on Truth Social. “Still No. 1.” He also marketed a t-shirt with the hashtag #J6PC. (A link on Patel’s site to buy the shirt is no longer active.)
Patel “declined to identify the choir members.”
Even though Patel proudly marketed the J6 Prison Choir’s song, he still appeared reluctant to identify the singers. For example, the Washington Post reported in May 2023 (two months after the song was first released) that Patel and Ed Henry, a former Fox News host who also helped produce the track, “declined to identify the choir members.”
When the Post’s reporters asked the Trump campaign about the “origin of the song,” campaign officials pointed to a video posted on Rumble. Relying on “physical characteristics and interviews with family members, supporters and attorneys,” the Post then identified five of the choir’s members: Ryan Nichols, Shane Jenkins, William Chrestman, Jonathan Mellis, and Julian Khater. Two of those five, Nichols and Khater, were, as noted above, later identified in the special counsel’s report as choir members. Jenkins’s attorney told the Post that while Jenkins appeared in the video on Rumble, he “did not participate in the version of the song that was promoted by Trump.” This raises the possibility that others in the Rumble video also did not perform in the final version of “Justice for All.”
The Post’s reporting demonstrates the difficulty in determining which January 6th defendants and convicts held in D.C. performed in “Justice for All.” And it also demonstrates why Patel should identify them before senators vote on his nomination to serve as FBI director.
At least 19 of the 20 January 6th inmates held in D.C. in mid-March 2023 are convicted felons.
The Post reported that the choir’s song, as performed in the video posted on Rumble, was filmed “sometime before” November 2022. Nichols had been moved out of the Washington, D.C. jail by the time the final track was released in March 2023. Patel promoted the song heavily that same month—including on War Room and on his Truth Social account—using it to portray the then-current population of January 6th inmates held in D.C. as victims.
“This powerful and moving song raises awareness and support for the political prisoners still locked in jail without trial following the January 6th protest in 2021,” Patel wrote in a March 10, 2023 post. “J6 Prison Choir consists of individuals who have been incarcerated as a result of their involvement in the January 6, 2021 protest for election integrity,” he claimed.
In the post, Patel did not name any of the inmates who were held in Washington, D.C. at the time. But he used “Justice for All” to cast these inmates as “political prisoners.”
We previously published an analysis of the 20 January 6th inmates held in Washington, D.C. as of March 13, 2023—that is, contemporaneous with Patel’s promotion of “Justice for All.” At the time, we found that 17 of the 20 January 6th inmates were accused of assaulting law enforcement officers during the attack on the Capitol. Eight of these 17 defendants had already either pleaded guilty or were convicted at trial of charges, including assaulting police officers.
Our updated analysis shows that in the months that followed the premiere of “Justice for All,” additional January 6th defendants held in D.C. pleaded guilty to, or were convicted of, assaulting cops. In total, 16 of the 20 January 6th inmates held in D.C. as of March 13, 2023 were convicted of or pleaded guilty to assaulting law enforcement. Some of the 16 were convicted of other charges as well. It appears that out of the 20 cases, only one, which involved a defendant accused of assaulting law enforcement, has not been adjudicated.
Three others held as of March 13, 2023 were convicted of or pleaded guilty to other felonies in the months that followed: William Chrestman (a Proud Boy), Jessica Watkins (an Oath Keeper), and Eric Christie.
Therefore, 19 of the 20 January 6th inmates who were held in D.C. as of March 13, 2023 were convicted felons. At least 16 of them have been convicted of or pleaded guilty to assaulting police.
But remember: As explained above, in the days before and after March 13, 2023, the date of the inmate population we analyzed, Kash Patel used “Justice for All” to portray the inmate population as victims.
Patel’s promotion of the “J6 Prison Choir” should be disqualifying.
Tillis’s concern with defending law enforcement is clearly at odds with Patel’s promotion of the “J6 Prison Choir.” Patel has gone much further than claiming January 6th was just, to use Tillis’s words, an “intemperate moment.” He has spread wild conspiracy theories about the attack on the U.S. Capitol. And the song he helped produce is propaganda on the rioters’ behalf.
Before senators vote on Patel’s nomination, they should learn as many details as possible about the “J6 Prison Choir” and Patel’s promotion of it. Patel should not be allowed to decline to name the choir’s members during his confirmation process. He should have to identify all its members.
Senators on the Judiciary Committee should be asking questions like this:
Is the special counsel’s list of the “J6 Prison Choir” members wrong? If it is correct, then why didn’t Patel explain to the American people that the choir included those who assaulted cops on January 6th?
If Patel claims he did not know the identity of the choir’s members, then why did he portray them as “political prisoners”? Are senators comfortable with confirming an FBI director who has said that he and others produced “Justice for All” because they want to “destroy the two-tier system of justice that is rotting America”?
The director of the FBI should be on the side of law and order—not whitewash the actions of violent rioters who attacked law enforcement during January 6th. For that reason, among others, Patel is unfit to serve as the head of America’s premier law enforcement agency.
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