Those conditions included a prohibition on using the internet — to keep Jensen away from the QAnon conspiracy, which he previously admitted to investigators was the reason he breached the Capitol. But when court officials made their first unannounced visit to check on Jensen at his home last month, they found him in his garage, using a cell phone to stream a right-wing news outlet.
District Judge Timothy Kelly said at a court hearing Thursday that he had released Jensen in July because Jensen claimed he had “turned a corner” and disavowed the conspiracy theories.
“But it’s now clear that he has not experienced the transformation that his lawyer previously described, and that he continues to seek out the conspiracy theories that led to his dangerous conduct on January 6,” continued Kelly, who was appointed by Trump in 2017 to the DC District Court. “I don’t see any reason to believe that he has had the wake-up call that he needs.”
“I think it’s probably a logical inference,” Kelly said,” that there are no conditions that will assure Mr. Jensen will not pose a danger to the safety of the community.”
At Thursday’s hearing, Jensen’s lawyers asked the judge to impose brief punishment of jail but not to indefinitely revoke his bail. The attorney also said Jensen’s attachment to conspiracy theories was like an “addiction” or “compulsion,” a comparison that the prosecutors rejected.
“At first glance, it sounds a bit Orwellian. A man sitting in his garage streaming the news over the internet… now the government wants to jail him,” Jensen’s lawyer Christopher Davis said.
“Orwellian aside,” Davis continued, “he was wrong, and he’s not denying that.”
This story has been updated with additional details.
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