From Political Prisoner to U.S. Senator? | Derrick Evans

Transcript:

Rebecca Weber: Welcome to Better For America, where we dive deep into the stories that really shape our nation and the people at the center of them. Now, today we’re going to be speaking with Derrick Evans. He is a former West Virginia state legislator who made national headlines for his involvement in the events of January 6th at the U. S. Capitol. He was indicted and later sentenced for his participation. He has since become a vocal figure in the ongoing conversation about government overreach, individual rights, and the consequences of political activism and the weaponization of our justice system. So don’t go every anywhere. We’ll be right back.

Derrick, it’s a pleasure to have you joining me and I thank you so much for being here.

Derrick Evans: All the pleasure is mine, Ms. Rebecca, thank you so much for having me.

Rebecca Weber: thank you so much, sir. You were arrested and prosecuted simply for being at the Capitol on January 6th. This was despite engaging in no violence.

Now Derrick, this is an issue that matters so much to AMAC members, over 2 million strong. from the moment you were taken into custody, what kind of, can you maybe tell us a little bit about what that was like? What kind of treatment did you receive?

Derrick Evans: Yeah, so for me, mine’s a little bit more unique than most people because I was one of the very first people arrested for January 6th.

I was actually arrested on January 8th, two days later, mainly because I was an elected official and they wanted to get their hands on me, if you will. They didn’t really know what they were going to do with prisoners at the point.

At the time I was the only elected Republican they could get their hands on. And so when they came to my house, what’s crazy is they told me that they watched my wife leave. They’ve been watching my home throughout the day. They knew I was home alone. I have four kids at the oldest, my, or at the time, my oldest was five years old.

They watched my wife leave. They knew I was home alone with my children. And that is the moment that they decided. to raid my home with, 10 to 15 FBI agents all over two misdemeanor trespassing charges at the time. And, they came and traumatized my family, traumatized my children, ripped me away, from my children and threw me in the back of a, of an SUV, with my, children, standing in the window, crying, wanting to know what’s going on with daddy.

Rebecca Weber: Unbelievable. this is just outrageous. it’s hard to imagine that this these are the kinds of attacks that we’ve seen from a radical left that really wanted to paint January 6th as something that it wasn’t. Now, fast forward today, Trump is back in charge. And for the first time, there’s a real opportunity to expose rather the full truth of what really happened on January 6th.

But Biden, he’s granted the January 6th committee blanket amnesty from prosecution. So how do we ensure that the corruption of this entire ordeal is really documented? I think that’s important.

Derrick Evans: Yeah that’s something I’ve been very aware of from the very early stages of January six, honestly, was that, whether I liked it or not, whether I believed it was, really that big of an event, but I realized that the left was making it into this big event that was going to be, looked back on in history at some point.

And so the historical context and sharing the truth has been very important to me. throughout this whole ordeal, I’ll tell you that, before going into prison and even sitting in solitary confinement, there were multiple rough days where I told myself that, you never know, man, President Trump might run for office again and when, and you get a pardon, and then I would tell myself that it’s just crazy talk because at the time Trump hadn’t even announced he was running they hadn’t even raided Mar a Lago yet.

None of these things that happened, but it was something I would tell myself and daydream about as a way to get through the moment, if you will. will. And so when president Trump officially announced he was running when he won, when he was sworn in and then I get the phone call that I’m getting the pardon, like it was, I can’t even describe the words with words as to what this meant for our family.

I get emotional thinking about it. It was just, it was overwhelming. We had, multiple years of, trauma and abuse from this government that was just all relieved and, taken away at one time. And I’ll tell you some of the things that people don’t think about, and this is what I’m getting emotional about is all I’ve ever wanted to do is be a good dad.

So I’m a big sports guy. I played sports, I played in college, I coached, in college, coached in high school, and when it’s my turn to coach my own children and be a part of their lives, I’ve had this January 6th domestic terrorist, all these things hanging over my head this entire time. I haven’t been able to make those memories and be a coach on the field or whatever with my own children because I couldn’t pass a background check. And it was one of those things that after getting the pardon, just talking with my wife one day and I was like, that’s when I realized like, Oh my gosh, like I’m going to be able to, be that dad to my children again.

and these are the things that’s outside of necessarily, the headlines that people don’t think about. In terms of the far reaching impact that January 6th has had on so many families, this is going to be a generational impact at this point. We’ve had several January 6th political prisoners who unfortunately committed suicide from the bullying of the government.

We’ve had multiple who lost their homes. We’ve got multiple elderly people who, we’re retired living in a home that was paid off and they decided to, take out a mortgage on their home to help their son or their child or their grandchild pay for legal fees. And now, here they are, it’s supposed to be in the golden years of their life, be spoiling the grandchildren and traveling.

And now they’re not able to do that because they spent all the money and everything that they had in order to try to keep their family member out of, years and decades of going to prison. So this is, this has got far reaching impact right now.

That is so much bigger, than like a simple pardon, has brought to us.

Rebecca Weber: just when you describe all of this, your children in the home watching these, dozen or more federal agents raid your home, come in, take you out, and all along. That you were peacefully protesting, that you did exactly what most all Americans would do, and that is peacefully march, and I like to remind people there is, the capitol building where our elected representatives are, oftentimes, and especially if you go back, a dozen, two dozen years ago, where you did just walk in and you would go meet with a legislator or meet with their aid.

When I, was marching, March for Life with my father, we, really enjoyed that march together. It was a great time that I had with my dad. And he said to me, you know what we do now, Rebecca, because I thought, it was all over, we’re going to get back on the bus and come back to Long Island.

He says, no, before we go home, he said, we’re going to walk into the Capitol building, we’re going to talk to our elected representatives. this is something that, we the people have always felt that, doing such is, within our rights, and, we have a government by the people, for the people.

It seems that what happened on January 6th, and we know more of this today to be true, that there was really, an intentional setup, if you will. many people say that they were, the doors were wide open, they were escorted in, they were invited in, they walked right past police officers. So now here you understand all along, when federal agents come to your door, you know that you were there peacefully.

how do you reconcile the type of punishment and the way that you were attacked against what really happened and come out so triumphant and grateful and, with such a wonderful attitude towards your future. Because not everybody, could carry that burden, like you said, from the bullying of the government.

Derrick Evans: Yeah, first I want to say that, I, didn’t know, I know people find this hard to believe. I have no reason to lie, But I didn’t know that the Capitol building was closed that day. The only reason it was closed was because of the COVID scandemic that they were running on everybody.

I live in West Virginia. We haven’t been following or paying attention to the COVID stuff for, months or a year or whatever at this point. Because when We live out in the country. We socially distance by just, how we exist. So I didn’t think anything of it, to be honest with you. I think a lot of people felt the same way, but, for me personally, you can watch it, it’s all over my social media, the videos out there, everything I’m getting ready to say can be verified on videos.

You don’t have to take my word for it, but I walked through an open set of doors. I saw a police officer. When I walked through the doors, I went straight to that police officer, 10, 15 foot away. Went straight over to the police officer. It’s all on video. I said, thank you for your service, sir.

God bless you. nobody means any harm or anything. And the police officer gives me a friendly fist bump on video and I walk on into the Capitol rotunda area. I was in there for roughly 10 minutes. I turned around, realized there was nothing really going on, walked back out. I think the police officer again and walked out the same set of doors I had entered.

And because of that, and then, I was all over the media because, I was an elected official. So I live streamed everything I did that day on Facebook. So that’s how it got out there so quickly because I didn’t think it was that big of a deal. I thought at worst I would maybe get a 50 citation like the people who pounded on the doors during the Kavanaugh hearings.

That’s what they got was a 50 citation. So I was like, okay, I’m, willing to pay a 50 fine, if you will, to, to, to exercise my freedom of speech. I think it’s wrong, but I’ll, pay that. It’s no, no big deal. I never, my wildest dreams imagined the FBI coming to my home and, facing 24 years in prison before terrorist enhancements.

I never expected all of those things to happen. And, that was, it was a shocking to say the least.

Rebecca Weber: And how long were you, in jail, in prison?

Derrick Evans: So I’m so fortunate compared to so many others. I really am. it cost us a lot of money, obviously, but, I had an 18 month legal battle.

And so for me, I was originally arrested on two misdemeanor charges. Then they came back like a month later added two more misdemeanor charges. Pretty much every january 6th defendant had the four had four basic misdemeanors no matter what And then they offered me a verbal plea deal They said choose your misdemeanor and we’ll drop all the other charges.

Nobody’s taken a plea deal at this moment. No, nobody’s done anything like that Once again, I was one of the first people arrested and I said I want to see this in writing Cause I don’t trust these people. I don’t, anything about them. I want to see whatever it is that they’re offering. I want to see this in writing and a long story short, what they wanted me to do.

And this is not unique to me. This is all the January 6th political prisoners. What they wanted us to do was to blame president Trump for our actions that day. And what I mean by that is the FBI, for instance, in the prosecuting attorneys, where they would ask these, declarative statements and form it as a question.

So they would say something. for example, they would say you went to the Capitol and you did all these things because president Trump told you to, didn’t you?Llike, that’s not a question, that’s a statement and they’re ending it with, didn’t you? Question mark. so that’s what they were wanting me to do.

I refuse to do that. And when I refuse to do that, they withdrew the verbal plea offer. And they did a superseding indictment on the 1512 obstruction of official proceeding, which is a 20 year felony. So now it’s facing 24 years in prison, and they did this to a lot of J6ers that they refused to work with them.

They would hit them with the 1512 obstruction of official proceeding, which had nothing to do with January 6th. We knew it had nothing to do with January 6th. I was confident that the Supreme Court would overturn this at some point, but I didn’t know how long that was going to take. For the record, the Supreme Court did overturn this in, I believe, it was October of last year, in 2024, that they overturned that and said that the 1512 doesn’t apply to January 6th.

And the government knew this, but to put this in perspective, they use that as a metaphorical gun to the head of the January 6th political prisoners to get you to plead guilty to something else. So in addition To the 24 years I was now facing in prison, 20 of it because of this charge that had nothing to do with January 6th, they then said, we can also add terrorist enhancements, which will now take you to roughly 40 years in prison.

But here’s the thing that at this point, we’ve now known this is like a year later, January of 2022. We’ve now known that they refuse to move trials out of DC. We know that you’re not going to get a fair trial in DC. You’re going to be found guilty of anything they accuse you of. And then they come and they say, and you’re bankrupt almost at this point.

And then they come in and say, here, you can have this plea offer, and now you’re going to face zero to six months in prison. So that’s what I did. I took the, felony civil disorder charge of, for civil disorder and, got sentenced to three months in prison. And I did roughly, I think around 10 days of that in solitary confinement because I refused the COVID vaccine.

While they were holding me hostage in the prison.

Rebecca Weber: Unbelievable, Derrick. Unbelievable. So not only are you facing, political persecution, you’re being ripped away from your family, and your young children, you’re being, manipulated, if you will, to go along with a narrative that they want you to go along with, carrot and stick type thing. You’re facing bankruptcy, knowing that if you, Stay true to, sticking with your, the truth, ultimately, why you were there, and, without pinning it on Donald Trump or anyone else for that matter. and you don’t know what the future holds. You don’t know if Joe Biden’s going to be reelected into office.

You don’t know what’s happening. I just, I call that real courage. they say that courage is, really how you act after something, very difficult. You’re faced with a difficult situation. You’re looking down the pit, and it’s how you react in those situations and you are a true.

Ideal person for, if we want to say, what does courage look like? I say, everybody needs to look at Derrick Evans because you certainly embody that. and it is quite remarkable that you represented so many people who were there, others who they just didn’t go after, but for every one of you, there were dozens of other people, hundreds of other people that were there peacefully protesting.

So we’ve got to ensure that, that this kind of corruption. doesn’t happen again, and I’m just so thankful, I thank God that we have Donald J. Trump as our President of the United States of America, and a lot of good leaders supporting him. In your view, have you seen other, misconduct coming out of the Biden Department of Justice?

What other egregious acts have you heard of or seen? Americans need to know just how far this government has gone and is willing. Was willing to really crush their political opposition.

Derrick Evans: To put this in perspective, just to how evil these people are. So we have a saying in the January 6th community that the process is the punishment, like the prison is bad.

Don’t get me wrong, obviously, but like the entire process is a punishment from, beginning to end that’s their goal. And When President Trump won in November and everybody knew that he was going to be issuing pardons, the DOJ continued to, to traumatize and arrest January 6 peaceful protesters and even put out a statement and said, we know they’re going to get pardoned, but we want them to go through this process.

Anyways, so that’s how evil these, the illegitimate Biden regime really is and was. And, and then not only that, it’s just so much bigger than just January 6th. They also came after parents who spoke out at school board meetings. They went after the pro life protesters who were praying outside of abortion clinics.

The guy who made memes on social media about Hillary Clinton went to prison. so they, were really ramping this up. I believe that January six was their little test to see how much, the American people were going to put up with and allow them to do. And I believe that their longterm goal was, and probably still is to, target every conservative, especially every Christian in this country.

That’s what I believe is happening right now. And that’s, why when I got out of prison and, I went on a tour around the country, speaking out at different. events and just wanted to share my story to remind everybody, of the corruption within the government, the weaponization of government, but more importantly, what their goal was surrounding January six was to put fear to use me and all the others as, examples to put fear into the American people.

They wanted to say, sit down, shut up, accept the tyranny you’re living under, or this is what’s going to happen to you. And so part of my reason for traveling all over the country was just to show people like I’m just an average guy. from Southern West Virginia. I took one on the chin from the most powerful corrupt government in the history of the world.

I got up. I dusted my britches off. I’m still standing and I’m still fighting to save this country, and if I can do that, you can do that as well because our rights do not come from the government. Our rights come from God, our creator, and the constitution was written primarily to prevent the government from infringing on our natural God given rights.

And I’ll end it with this, our founding fathers were genius. They put the first amendment first for a reason. It’s the most powerful. peaceful way that we can redress our grievances with the government. If we willingly give up our first amendment, if we willingly give up our natural God given right of free speech out of fear, then we’ve already lost.

We might as well pack it in. There’s no saving this country if we’re too afraid to even speak out against the injustices that are happening.

Rebecca Weber: That is so well said. and just a great reminder that, things, bad things can sometimes happen to good people, and you’ve got to stay true, and you’ve got to be brave and have the courage to stand up for what you believe in.

When I heard about these elderly, grandmas that were peacefully praying outside of abortion clinics that were arrested, and thrown in prison, you think to yourself, what kind of evil goes after peaceful protesting. That is our first amendment, right? We have that but we have a, corrupt, far radical left that seems to be okay with a lot of things that, you know, calling evil good and good evil.

And I’m just so thankful that we see strong leadership today and, and we continue to, Elect those representatives who are going to represent the voices of the majority of we the people and so that’s what we’re praying for But Derrick, you know you said it you’ve been through hell and back you were targeted you were arrested You were treated like a criminal just for simply standing up for what you believe in But you are still here and you’re still fighting so share with us a little bit How do you plan to really rise from the ashes so to speak from this experience, and what do you have planned next?

Derrick Evans: I’ll first say, in a weird way, I’m thankful for the experience. God never puts you through anything more than what you can handle, if you will. and, it’s definitely got me closer to God. I tell everyone the closest I’ve ever been to God was sitting in solitary confinement.

And I know it sounds really crazy to say that, but, that’s definitely the closest I’ve ever been to God. It’s maybe a better husband or better, father. For, example, the super bowl was on the other night. I don’t really watch NFL anyways, but I usually watch that. And, my kids were like, Hey, we want to play the board game.

Sorry. And I was sitting there and I thought about it. I was like, you know what? When I was in solitary confinement, I didn’t miss anything sports related. I was missing my kids. And so I didn’t want, I didn’t even turn on the TV. I sit there and played the board game. Sorry, which I won by the way.

So it just made me a better person overall in terms of being thankful for the things that probably most people take for granted as well as myself beforehand on a regular basis, such as feeling the wind, feeling, seeing the sun, seeing stars, those things were all taken away from me when I was in prison.

And those are things that, I cherish now when I walk outside and look up, I see the stars at night. I’m instantly thankful in a way that I can’t even express what in the words, to be honest with you. but yeah, look, I’m still finding it to try to save this country right now.

I was in politics before January 6th. I’m the, only elected Republican in the entire country who had the courage to go stand with the American people that day and got thrown in prison for doing so, and, so now I’m going to, I’m going to throw my hat in the ring and then run for us Senate here in West Virginia, we’ve got a Rhino who’s representing us and, I’m going to try to dethrone her, if you will, and, and go back to the Capitol as an elected member of the U. S. Senate. That’s my, plan right now, but we’ll see what God has in store.

Rebecca Weber: Amen. we will be praying for you, and we are just so grateful to have you here with us today. Thank you so much for standing up for individual rights, for really championing, the rights of we the people, and for your commitment to America, and to common sense.

We need so much more of that. We’re just so grateful. that you were with us today, and that finally, we, pray justice is served and that we could right the wrongs of the past so we never see that kind of thing happen again. Derrick Evans, how can people follow you on your social media handle?

Derrick Evans: Absolutely. You can go to my website. It’s Evans4WV. com. It’s either F O R or the number four. We’re on both domains. So Evans4WV. com. You can also find me on, X, True Social, Getter, Facebook, you name it. We’re pretty much everywhere. I’m super active on X. It’s just, I don’t know what the handle is. I’ve been banned so many times on different platforms.

They’re all a little bit different now, but over the years. But I think you should search Derrick Evans for WV or something like that. It should, pop up there on X. I should know that by now, but I don’t know the exact handle.

Rebecca Weber: Yeah, we’ll definitely put a link down here in the bio. Definitely check him out, follow him.

We wish you the very best of luck and we look forward to having you back with us again, perhaps as Senator Evans. That’s what we’ll pray for. Thank you again so much for being with us today and to all of you out there listening. Thank you for tuning in. Be sure to tell your friends and family all about AMAC.

We are the fastest growing conservative. 50 plus organization in America. Don’t go to the woke. who stick with AMAC. We’re here fighting for you on Capitol Hill and in your state visit AMAC dot us to join or renew your membership with AMAC until next time. Have a blessed day, everyone.