He was facing two years in prison for Jan. 6, but Jonah Westbury is ready to move on with his life after the charges against were dropped thanks to actions taken by President Donald Trump within hours of his inauguration last week.
Westbury shared his story exclusively with Liz Collin on her podcast. Alpha News has profiled his family’s story in the past. Westbury, along with his two brothers, Aaron and Issac, and his father, were charged in the wake of Jan. 6. Westbury was the first of his family to be arrested after an FBI raid on his home.
He was 25 years old when he took the trip to D.C. in 2021 with his family.
“Our goal and the reason why me and my family were going out there was to go and see the president speak,” Westbury explained. “By the time that we got to the Capitol, there was already some, I think, bad actors that were there.”
Westbury noted the doors to the Capitol were opened from the inside.
“We actually pushed crowd members back to allow for police officers to get out due to the fact that they were getting compressed between a small space. My father had gotten sprayed in the face with pepper spray. He was an older man. He’s had multiple strokes. He falls down … Then a cop actually brings him into the Capitol and sets him down on a bench,” Westbury said.
That’s when Jonah, Aaron, and Isaac went inside to get their father. Jonah was inside for about eight minutes walking around.
“You would think that if this was like a violent insurrection, people are bringing fire and pitchforks to the Capitol building, there would be damage and destruction. There would be mass hysteria. There really was none of that. People inside of the Capitol building were, for the most part, extremely reverent of the area. That’s the word that comes to my mind,” Westbury said.
“There was no ill intent. The only intent that people had, me and my family, I can speak for myself, that we had was we wanted to peacefully let our voices be heard by our government. You know, one of our amendment rights is to redress our grievances with the government. That’s our First Amendment right. We went to the Capitol to utilize that right and obviously, the media misconstrued that day … astronomically,” he said.
It was weeks later when Westbury says a former classmate turned him into the FBI and then posted about it on Facebook.
He says an FBI agent first stopped by their Lindstrom home. Within a half hour, Westbury retained an attorney who got in touch with that agent in February of 2021.
“They went back and forth, one or two conversations, and then the FBI just went completely dark. There was no longer any communication back from them. Fast forward to April 9 of 2021, early morning, it’s a Friday and you hear a loud ‘bang, bang, bang, FBI open up,'” Westbury recalled.
“It was the FBI and there were 25 to 30 agents fully vested up, like bulletproof vests on, ballistic vests and AR-15s. My charges were four misdemeanors, none of them violent, no felonies, and they showed up and it looked like a scene from a movie where you would have a serial killer with 30 bodies in the basement and this was following me having a lawyer reaching out to them, willing to come down and talk,” he said.
Westbury’s charges included entering and remaining in a restricted building, disorderly and disruptive conduct in a restricted building, and parading or demonstrating in a Capitol building.
“Since the pardons have happened, there have been multiple different news outlets that have reached out to myself and other family members. We’ve declined to comment with all of them other than yourself, just because we want to talk to people who actually want to promote the truth,” Westbury said.
He made reference to how Minnesota media has treated their case, including a recent story from the Chisago County Press about how Westbury was traveling out of the country for his honeymoon.
Westbury said he has remained on the terror watchlist since being charged and due to extra security checks, he ended up missing his connecting flight and therefore missing a day of his honeymoon.
“There were bad actors in that crowd and many of them, as we found out after the fact, were planted there by our intelligence agencies. I think that that is something that needs to be looked at. Is it a coincidence that the whole Jan. 6 committee got a pardon from Biden before he left? If there’s no crime, why is there a pardon coming out?” he asked.
The Westbury’s legal fees are in the tens of thousands of dollars. There is a fund set up to help.
The family expressed their thanks to President Trump for the actions he took last week on their behalf.
“I’ve always been proud to be an American, but it restored my faith in America. Donald Trump is not Jesus. Jesus is the only one that saves us, but Donald Trump is a man who’s sticking to his words and I have nothing but the utmost respect and thanks for that,” he said.
Liz Collin
Liz Collin has been a truth-teller for 20 years as a multi-Emmy-Award-winning reporter and anchor. Liz is a Worthington, Minnesota native who lives in the suburbs with her husband, son and loyal lab.
