Who is Doug Jensen? Tracing a QAnon believer's path to the Jan. 6 Capitol riot
Editor's note: This piece was originally published on Jan. 2, 2022. It is being republished on Sept. 24, after Doug Jensen was found guilty of felony and misdemeanor crimes related to the Jan. 6, 2021, U.S. Capitol riot. Read more about the verdict here.
Doug Jensen’s road trip to the center stage of an American political crisis began as soon as he got off work on Jan. 5, 2021.
Federal prosecutors say that Jensen, a then-41-year-old Des Moines resident, worked a full-day construction shift before hitting the road with a companion for a nonstop 16-hour drive to Washington, D.C. His destination: a rally the following day, proclaimed by then-President Donald Trump, to put pressure on Congress as it met to certify the results of the 2020 presidential election.
But it wasn’t just the president who summoned him to Washington. Jensen was traveling to witness “the Storm,” a mass arrest of Democrats and other “enemies” predicted by adherents of the online conspiracy theory known as QAnon.
Jensen made it to the rally. He heard Trump tell attendees to “walk down to the Capitol” and joined the crowd as it shifted nearly 2 miles to the U.S. Capitol grounds. And there, wearing a QAnon T-shirt and after more than a day with little to no sleep, he was on the leading edge of the Jan. 6 storming of the Capitol. He achieved instant notoriety as photos and videos showed him chasing and shouting at police officers inside the building.
Within days, Jensen was arrested and indicted on multiple federal charges. A year later, his case continues to work its way through the courts. Jensen's attorneys declined to make him available for an interview.
Court filings and interviews depict a man who bought wholesale into conspiracy theories that led him to become, in his own words, the “poster boy” of a riot that shocked the nation. His lawyers and law enforcement variously portray Jensen, who has been described as a loving family man, as someone who is either repentant or still caught in the thrall of the conspiracy theories that brought him to the halls of government that January day.
Although he does not face the most serious charges from the riot — he is not, unlike fellow Iowans Kyle Young and Salvador Sandoval, accused of assaulting law enforcement officers — he remains one of the most visible defendants as the courts and political system come to terms with what happened on Jan. 6, 2021.
More:Here's where the cases stand against 6 Iowans charged over participating in the U.S. Capitol riot
Jensen told investigators he had been following QAnon for about four years, but it's not clear when the Des Moines father of three first became a self-described "true believer" in the far-fetched conspiracy theory. In fact, the continued lack of answers in Jensen's case illustrates the difficulty in piecing together the psychology of the Jan. 6 participants.
"Maybe it was mid-life crisis, the pandemic, or perhaps the message just seemed to elevate him from his ordinary life to an exalted status with an honorable goal," his lawyer wrote. "In any event, he fell victim to this barrage of internet-sourced info."
Doug Jensen was one of the first rioters inside the Capitol on Jan. 6
Although court filings do not provide a full account of Jensen’s movements at the Capitol, many details are clear.
Demonstrators began gathering at the Capitol at around 12:30 p.m., and by 1 p.m. — even before Trump finished his speech at the Ellipse, a park south of the White House — the first groups had breached police barriers on the west side of the Capitol. As people made their way from Trump’s rally to the Capitol, the growing mob continued to push police back.
Rioters first forced their way inside the building shortly after 2 p.m., causing Congress to adjourn and evacuate. It would take more than four hours to fully secure the complex again.
Photos and videos filed as evidence show Jensen outside, at one point climbing an exterior wall. Two videos Jensen recorded on his phone show him standing next to the Capitol, saying he was “touching the f------ White House” and exhorting a crowd to “storm the White House — that’s what we do!”
Prosecutors say Jensen was one of the first inside the building. One video on YouTube cited by prosecutors shows a crowd using a riot shield and piece of lumber to break a window and enter. Jensen, wearing a black stocking cap and a hoodie under his T-shirt, doesn’t help break the glass but is the 10th person to climb inside.
Once in the building, prosecutors say Jensen "pushed his way to the front of the pack” and confronted a lone Capitol Police officer, Eugene Goodman, in what has become one of the most widely shared videos of the riot. Goodman seized a baton, ordered the rioters to get back, and then began retreating up an interior staircase, pursued by Jensen at the head of a crowd.
"Hit me, I'll take it," Jensen later told an FBI agent he had said to Goodman.
The pursuit led them to a landing with an open, unguarded door into the Senate chamber, which was still being evacuated. Goodman shoved Jensen to get his attention and retreated in the other direction, drawing the crowd away.
Goodman has declined interview requests since the riot but has been widely acclaimed for his actions. His citation for the Congressional Gold Medal reads, “Officer Eugene Goodman’s selfless and quick-thinking actions doubtlessly saved lives and bought security personnel precious time to secure and ultimately evacuate the Senate before the armed mob breached the chamber.”
Further into the building, Jensen and the crowd confronted a police line, and at one point, he placed his hand into a pocket where investigators say he had a folding work knife. As officers tried to deescalate the encounter, someone broke open a fire extinguisher, and dramatic photos show Jensen advancing through the resulting haze.
One officer later told prosecutors that Jensen was the most aggressive rioter in the hallway, but that “the scariest thing about (Jensen) was that he kept calmly approaching officers even when everyone else was momentarily fazed by the ‘explosion.’ ”
It’s not clear from court filings where Jensen went after this showdown or how long he remained in the building. One surveillance video released by prosecutors taken in the Capitol rotunda shows police shepherding rioters out of the building at about 3:30 p.m., and Jensen can be seen facing down a group of five officers who are forcing him step by step across the floor.
Jensen is fired, arrested, charged after Jan. 6 Capitol attack
In the months since the riot, online sleuths and prosecutors have combed through thousands of hours of video and other sources to identify members of the mob. With Jensen, it took less than a day before he was confirmed to be the man who had chased Goodman up the stairs.
From January:What we know about Doug Jensen, the Des Moines man photographed at the Capitol riot and arrested by the FBI
On Jan. 8, Jensen’s employer, a masonry contractor, announced he’d been fired. That same day, he walked 6 miles to present himself at the Des Moines Police Department, saying he thought he was in trouble.
The FBI let Jensen go that day after a lengthy interview, even giving him a ride home. But agents returned to his home on Jan. 9 to arrest him. On Jan. 11, a Washington, D.C., grand jury indicted Jensen on six charges, including obstructing law enforcement during civil disorder; assaulting, resisting or impeding a federal officer; violent entry; and disorderly conduct.
More:Iowan Doug Jensen hit with weapons charge in new Capitol riot indictment
FBI Agent Tyler Johnson, who took part in Jensen's Jan. 8 interview, later testified that Jensen admitted to being at the Capitol and chasing Goodman up the stairs. Jensen told investigators he had specifically placed himself in the forefront of the mob so that Q, the anonymous supposed source behind QAnon conspiracy theories and the letter emblazoned on his shirt, “could get the credit for the events that occurred that day.”
Jensen perceived his visit to the Capitol in a very different light than the police who sought to block his path. He said he felt officers received him and other rioters cordially, that “he was being led in by law enforcement officers” and that “Officer Goodman was waving him along as he went up the stairs,” Johnson later testified, an account contradicted both by Goodman's account to prosecutors and video of the incident.
QAnon posts of 'the Storm' served as magnet to D.C.
Jensen was highly motivated to travel to Washington, D.C. — he had big expectations for what was about to happen.
After his arrest, he told law enforcement that he wanted to attend Trump’s rally because he had seen Q publish that “the Storm has arrived.”
The QAnon conspiracy holds that a small group of people, including high-level government figures, Democrats and celebrities, are secretly engaged in child sex trafficking. The conspiracy regards Trump as a pivotal figure — a savior — who will expose the supposed wrongdoers and arrest or punish them in an event known as “the Storm.”
What is QAnon?:What to know about the baseless, far-right conspiracy theory
“Essentially, 'the Storm' is this idea in the Q mythology that the whole reason that Trump was elected was so he could take this revenge on behalf of good, civilized people to expose this cabal, this secret group, arrest them and then do a number of things with them — try them for their crimes or even ship them to Guantanamo,” said Kedron Bardwell, a political science professor at Simpson College who teaches a class on conspiracy theories. “And in some of the Q mythology, they were executed.”
When Jensen heard others at the rally talking about storming the Capitol, he wanted to go along, prosecutors say.
“Defendant admitted that he agreed to participate because it was 'Showtime' and he wanted to be a part of it,” court documents state. “Defendant stated that he wanted to participate in ‘Storming the Capitol’ because ‘I was trying to fire up this nation,’ and ‘I’m all about a revolution.’”
In his confrontations with police inside the Capitol, Jensen admitted to shouting: “Why are you defending these m----- f-----s? Why aren’t you arresting them?” and “I’m only here to make you do your jobs and arrest these people.”
By “these people,” Jensen later said he meant Vice President Mike Pence and the rest of “the corrupt government,” court documents state.
Even days after the riot, Jensen was still hoping for the arrests foretold by Q. Johnson, the FBI agent, testified that during his interview, Jensen asked several questions to the effect of “am I being duped?” by QAnon. He also wanted to know whether the FBI was involved in planning for "the Storm."
“Can you guys let me in on that, if you know if these arrests are real?” Jensen asked the agent.
Johnson told him he didn’t know.
'Trump is the fuel to the fire' for conspiracy movements, professor says
"The Storm" did not take place on Jan. 6.
Congress certified President Joe Biden's Electoral College victory after a day of chaos that caused Pence and members of Congress to seek shelter for hours as rioters ransacked the Capitol. The certification process that normally would have been a formality instead was the catalyst for the gravest internal attack on the U.S. democratic system since the Civil War.
But for believers in QAnon and other election-related conspiracy theories, like Jensen, that wasn’t the end.
Although conspiracies often rely on making predictions, believers can remain committed to the conspiracy even if those events don’t come to pass. Instead, they adapt to account for the new information.
“It’s very, very hard, psychologically, to reject a belief system like this,” Bardwell said. “More oftentimes, people will adapt to the fact that the reality seems not to fit the predictions that were made.”
Before and after the Capitol riot, Trump has stoked the belief that he didn't lose the election, that it was instead stolen from him through massive fraud. Some experts refer to his argument — that he was the real winner of the election — as “the Big Lie.”
“If Trump was the person who would bring about 'the Storm' and create this awakening, what happens when Trump loses?” said Bardwell, a former Republican who left the party after Trump's rise to power. “In that way, the election 'Big Lie' becomes almost a compensatory mechanism — it’s a rationalization; a post-hoc rationalization.”
In the days leading up to Jan. 6, Trump gave his followers hope that there was a chance he could continue serving as president — when in fact there was no legal way for him to do so.
His campaign and allied groups brought more than 60 lawsuits challenging the outcome of the election and lost all but one of them. Courts and Trump’s own appointed law enforcement and national security officials said there was no evidence of fraud that would have altered the election results.
Trump’s falsehoods about the election were a continuation of a career in politics that has supercharged the growth of conspiracy theories, including QAnon and, earlier, the “birther” theory — contending that President Barack Obama was born outside the United States and was not a legitimate president.
Through Trump’s status as an authority figure, first as a candidate and then as the president, he brought those ideas into the center of the country’s political discourse and inspired others to take up the call, Bardwell said.
“Trump is the fuel to the fire for the growth in these conspiracy theory movements, anything from the birther movement to Q,” Bardwell said. “He legitimizes the belief system and says this is not a nonmainstream belief; this is a belief that belongs in the mainstream of American politics.”
Iowa's other Capitol riot suspects:
- US Capitol riot suspect Kyle Young assaulted multiple officers, threatening to kill one, prosecutors say
- Cedar Rapids man Leo Kelly faces five more charges related to Jan. 6 riot at U.S. Capitol
- Tip led to FBI arrests of Iowa mother, son in Capitol riot
- 'One of the first ones inside': Northern Iowa father, son charged in Jan. 6 Capitol attack
Polling has shown Iowans are divided on how to view the Jan. 6 riots. A November Des Moines Register/Mediacom Iowa Poll found 50% of Iowans said the events on Jan. 6 were an insurrection and a threat to democracy, while 22% said the events were unfortunate but are in the past so there’s no need to worry about them anymore, and 18% said what happened was a political protest protected under the First Amendment.
While nearly all Democrats, 93%, said Jan. 6 was an insurrection and a threat to democracy, just one in five Iowa Republicans, 20%, said the same. More than a third of Republicans, 36%, said the event was a political protest, while 32% said it was an unfortunate event but in the past.
During brief release, Jensen caught streaming conspiracy videos
Even now, in the absence of new posts from Q, the conspiracy continues to evolve.
“Not all of what’s Q or QAnon relies on Q continuing to make posts,” Bardwell said. “Once you create the communities around QAnon beliefs, those varied communities will create their own stories. And so you find that there’s diversity within QAnon about the different things they think will happen now, post-election.”
From USA Today:QAnon followers distance themselves from the movement's most bizarre conspiracy theories as they rebrand
Jensen has continued to monitor the conspiracy's evolution since — even defying court orders to do so.
On July 13, a judge ordered Jensen released from jail and returned to Des Moines under home incarceration, while forbidding him from accessing the internet or political news. But Jensen's release didn’t last long.
While his lawyer told the court that Jensen had rejected his belief in QAnon, an officer performing a home check on Jensen in August found him in his garage using an iPhone to stream videos from a symposium held by Mike Lindell, a pillow magnate and leading advocate of the belief that Trump won the election.
More:Fact check: MyPillow CEO Mike Lindell spreads false claim about Arizona election results
That violated his terms of release. Jensen first claimed the phone was his daughter's, then said his wife left the news on when she left for work, court documents state. Finally, his attorney wrote that Jensen was cutting down a tree during a hot week and went into the garage to cool down while listening to the symposium on the phone using Bluetooth-enabled radio.
Jensen’s lawyer called it “Orwellian” to arrest a man for listening to a news broadcast in his garage. But he also acknowledged Jensen had violated his pretrial release terms and that the far-right broadcasts he listened to were similar to what led him to the Capitol in January. The judge ordered him back to jail.
"Frankly, I think it’s probably a logical inference that there are no conditions that I can impose that will ensure Mr. Jensen does not pose a risk to the community," Judge Timothy Kelly said at the time. "I made Mr. Jensen’s conditions of release extraordinarily clear."
Many people who embrace conspiracy theories "can really start to live in an alternative reality" that motivates them to seek out more exposure to the conspiracy and to like-minded believers, said Dr. Ziv Cohen, a New-York based forensic psychiatrist who has examined conspiracy theory believers.
"One of the first things they’re going to do is reconnect with those media outlets that fueled that belief for them, that gives them what they perceive as a lot of positive energy," Cohen said. "So I think that it does show the degree of how these conspiracy theories really become part of a person’s identity. Their whole thinking gets very wrapped up in conspiratorial thinking."
Bardwell said research on conspiracy theories shows people who believe conspiracies tend to see the world as being run by elites who are holding down "regular people," and they're often pessimistic about the world and their powerlessness within it. Tapping into a community of fellow conspiracy theory believers can give people a sense that they have the power to fight back.
“They give people a sense of belonging, and they give people a sense of agency that, 'Look, it’s not all hopeless and, if we just band together, we can expose the elites and take the country back,'” he said.
Doug Jensen's siblings see him as 'hardworking family man,' with 'good values'
Members of Jensen's family challenge this depiction of him — as a radical in the grip of a debunked conspiracy theory. They describe him as a “family man” with “good values.” He and his wife, April, have been together nearly 20 years and have three children, according to defense attorneys: a 21-year-old son and 17- and 14-year-old daughters.
His attorney says Jensen spent much of his childhood in foster care because his mother was institutionalized numerous times for mental health issues. In June, his defense attorney wrote that Jensen was initially drawn to QAnon for its "stated mission to eliminate pedophiles from society," which he said resonated particularly with Jensen's own unstable childhood.
"A fiercely protective family man, this was a powerful theme for him to latch onto," attorney Christopher Davis wrote.
The Jensens live on the southern edge of Des Moines, in a neighborhood tucked between County Line Road and Highway 5. The houses are mostly small and older — Jensen's was built in 1967, according to Warren County records — and the streets need repair, but the homes are neat and the lawns well-kept. The family bought the home in 2004, county records show.
"He is a very loving father. His kids and wife are and always have been a priority for him," sister Deb Kauzlarich-Nairn told the Des Moines Register in a Facebook message. “He is a hard worker, working tons of hours to provide for his family. Family man for sure.”
Public records support that idea, even showing him co-signing the mortgage of another sister, who, like many of Jensen’s relatives, did not return messages seeking comment.
Other current and childhood friends and business associates contacted by the Register either did not respond or declined to speak about Jensen. An employee who answered the phone at Jensen's former employer said no one at the company wished to comment.
Kauzlarich-Nairn said she had not had much contact with her brother in the year before the Capitol riot, but that she previously didn't know of him believing in conspiracies.
"He never assaulted anyone — never laid a finger on anyone — and yet he is being portrayed as a horrible person who believed in crazy things," she said.
"I don't believe he was brainwashed, but I had not had much contact with him in the last year," she said.
Jensen’s brother, William Routh, did not return messages from the Register but described him in similar terms to the Associated Press.
“I have friends that I speak to constantly that have conspiracy theories,” Routh said, “but this was a shock to me, more than anything because I would not have thought this from my brother, Doug, because he’s a very good, hardworking family man and he has good values.”
Yet Johnson, the FBI agent, said in court that Jensen told investigators he had reached a level of total obsession over his four years of following QAnon online.
"He said in a typical day, he works an eight-hour day. When he gets home, he consumes basically exclusively a lot of this information from QAnon," Johnson testified.
The acquaintance who traveled to Washington with Jensen, who has not been identified in court filings, suggested to investigators that Jensen had gone much deeper into QAnon than his siblings knew.
“Anybody that knows Doug will tell you conspiracy theories go into his head,” the acquaintance told the FBI. “He bought into a lot more than just Trump and the whole political aspect.”
April Jensen told investigators that “researching, and learning, and stuff he didn’t know” had changed her husband, prosecutors said in a June court filing.
According to Davis, his attorney, even Jensen doesn't fully understand his "true believer" journey.
Jensen's social media accounts are no longer active. However, court records show he posted on social media about participating in the riot, including posting tweets and videos from the Capitol that have now become evidence in the case against him.
A record of brushes with law enforcement, most minor
Jensen has had his share of past problems — including brushes with police. Most involved minor offenses: a dismissed shoplifting charge in 1997, when he was 18, driving with a suspended license as a habitual traffic offender in 2001, and trespassing in 2006.
A 2009 search warrant on Doug and April Jensen's home led to police in Warren County seizing property, according to court dockets. Court officials said they could not locate the relevant records.
The most serious issue, however, came in 2015 in Rochester, Minnesota, where Jensen was arrested and charged with two counts each of assault, domestic assault and disorderly conduct. He pleaded guilty to one count of domestic assault and one count of disorderly conduct.
According to records in his current federal case, the domestic assault was not against April Jensen, but it is not clear who the victim in the case was.
According to Facebook posts, Jensen's son received treatment for a complex medical condition at the Rochester-based Mayo Clinic.
Kauzlarich-Nairn called the illness "quite hard on the entire family," but didn't elaborate.
In charging documents regarding the Capitol storming, FBI investigators said Jensen was undergoing treatment for mental illness at the time of the riot and lied about it during his police interview. Records do not specify the nature of the treatment.
Cohen, the psychiatrist, said it can depend on the person, but generally, research has shown that people who become involved in extremist or conspiracy thinking don't have serious mental illnesses that would affect their behavior.
"It’s hard to predict who is going to take extremist thinking in the direction of actually going into action," he said.
According to court filings, Jensen was a “daily” marijuana user, a factor prosecutors cited to weigh against his release, and that he admitted to having tried other controlled substances in the past.
'Languishing' in D.C. jail as legal wrangling continues
As of Dec. 6, 719 people had been charged in connection with the riot; 129 had pleaded guilty to charges. In March, BuzzFeed reported that Jensen, too, was negotiating with prosecutors, and his attorney said in court that the main sticking point was the question of pretrial release. Though granted, it was quickly reversed after Jensen violated the court's terms.
More:Capitol riot arrests: See who's been charged across the U.S.
In December, Jensen tried for pretrial release again. Davis, his attorney, said Jensen apologized for violating the previous court order, but also asked that the internet prohibition be lifted, writing that the ban “has an uncomfortable ring of Totalitarianism.”
In response, prosecutors noted that it was Jensen who originally proposed the conditions of release he now claims were overly restrictive.
Kelly has yet to rule on Jensen's latest request.
Jensen also is seeking to dismiss one of the charges against him, for “obstructing an official proceeding.” The statute under which he is charged is part of a witness-tampering law passed in the wake of the 2001 Enron accounting scandal. Jensen and other Jan. 6 defendants argue the statute is too vague or overbroad to apply to the riot.
Until that issue is decided — and until Jensen either reaches a plea deal or goes to trial — it appears likely he will remain “languishing in a DC Jail cell, locked down most of the time,” as his attorney described in one filing.
Prosecutors believe that’s for the best, arguing that Jensen has demonstrated such poor judgment and commitment to his beliefs that he cannot be trusted not to reoffend. If convicted of the most serious charges against him, he likely faces multiple years in prison.
While some people end up leaving conspiracy theories on their own, for someone as deeply immersed in a conspiracy worldview as Jensen appears to be, it can be very difficult to break free, Cohen said.
“For the people that are really in the conspiracy theory, there’s not much that you can do to move them away from the conspiracy theory,” he said. “And in fact, if you try to, the more aggressive you get trying to convince them that they’re being manipulated, the more defensive that they can get.”
Jensen's lapse back into conspiracy theories while under home release has persuaded the court that Jensen isn't yet willing to leave QAnon behind.
"It's now clear that he has not experienced a transformation and that he continues to seek out those conspiracy theories that led to his dangerous conduct on Jan. 6," Kelly said when he rescinded Jensen’s pretrial release in September. "I don't see any reason to believe that he has had the wake-up call that he needs."
But spending time more time in the D.C. jail has apparently not provided that "wake-up call."
Jensen uses QAnon slogan 'WWG1WGA' in D.C. jail
A popular slogan among QAnon adherents is "Where we go one, we go all." On Dec. 7, a website sympathetic to the Jan. 6 suspects published several Christmas cards purportedly signed by many of the incarcerated defendants.
Jensen, back in custody, signed with his name and "WWG1WGA."
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.
Stephen Gruber-Miller covers the Iowa Statehouse and politics for the Register. He can be reached by email at sgrubermil@registermedia.com or by phone at 515-284-8169. Follow him on Twitter at @sgrubermiller.
Daniel Lathrop is a staff writer on the Register's investigative team. Reach him at (319) 244-8873 or dlathrop@dmreg.com. Follow him at @lathropd on Twitter and facebook.com/lathropod.