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Today’s blacklisted American: Innocent man sentenced one-year in prison for appearing as George Washington in the Capitol on January 6

Isaac Yoder at the Capitol
Isaac Yoder at the Capitol, dressed as George Washington

They’re coming for you next: When Isaac Yoder put on his home-made costume of George Washington and went to the demonstrations on January 6, 2021, he was doing what he had been doing for years, making his statement about the roots of American liberty and free speech at many different protests. His goal wasn’t solely to protest the election of Joe Biden. He was there as much to remind everyone where our freedoms came from, “to honor the memory and legacy” of our Founding Fathers.

The Biden Department of Justice however didn’t like this innocent expression of free speech. It arrested Yoder, and has gotten him sentenced to a one year prison term for “Parading, Demonstrating, or Picketing in a Capitol Building,” actions that the First Amendment to the Constitution expressly permits, and in fact outlaws our federal government from prohibiting.

A Missouri man walked into the U.S. Capitol on January 6, 2021, dressed as George Washington. He caused no damage, engaged in no violence, and was even recorded peacefully speaking with police before leaving. For daring to dress as America’s pre-eminent Founding Father and symbolically rebuking our corrupt ruling class, Isaac Yoder was surveilled for seven months, eventually arrested, fined, and sentenced to a year in prison.

When Yoder arrived, the worst protests had ended, and the Capitol police had already opened the doors and were letting people quietly walk through the building. But he was part of a protest against Joe Biden, the Washington ruling class, and its control of the Federal government, and that could not be allowed, even though he was dressed as George Washington.

When he was later approached by the FBI in 2021, he assumed they were just trying to obtain information and could not imagine they planned to arrest him. He thus mistakenly cooperated with them, and was subsequently found guilty of four misdemeanors and sentenced to a year in prison. The Justice Department’s main claim is that Yoder lied in his statements because it didn’t match the testimony of an FBI officer who never saw Yoder, was in a different part of the Capitol, and experienced something completely different. Yet Yoder’s statements did match those of another officer who actually spoke to him and was a witness to Yoder’s actual behavior.

In other words, Yoder was found guilty for actions done by others, by witnesses whose testimony actually proved he was not part of those actions. As he notes in an interview,

They [the Biden administration] keep trying to act like we are accusing them of being tyrants, ‘That’s not right, don’t act like that.’ Okay, but stop proving us right. … When they do that they only add fuel to the fire of people who call them tyrants, because there is nothing else you can say. …

They are being very vindicate. They hate America, they hate God, they hate the American people, they hate anyone who stands in their way. [emphasis in original]

Isaac Yoder and his family
Isaac Yoder and his family

Yoder has a wife and three young children. They have set up a GiveSendGo donation page. Please consider donating to help them during that year in which Yoder will be in prison and unable to make a living from his locksmith business. At the moment he doesn’t even know when his sentence will begin, so he cannot even make plans to deal with it.

Yoder and everyone he knows is standing strong however. As he notes in that interview, “We’re gonna win this. … The amazing thing is that my family, our church, our community are asking for ways to help. They want to help as much as possible.”

The sad part is Yoder is only one of many other innocent Americans whom the Biden administration is sending to prison simply for “parading”, for expressing their American rights of free speech, proving unequivocally that this Biden administration is made of tyrants.

Genesis cover

On Christmas Eve 1968 three Americans became the first humans to visit another world. What they did to celebrate was unexpected and profound, and will be remembered throughout all human history. Genesis: the Story of Apollo 8, Robert Zimmerman's classic history of humanity's first journey to another world, tells that story, and it is now available as both an ebook and an audiobook, both with a foreword by Valerie Anders and a new introduction by Robert Zimmerman.

 

The print edition can be purchased at Amazon. from any other book seller, or direct from my ebook publisher, ebookit. The ebook is available everywhere for $5.99 (before discount) at amazon, or direct from my ebook publisher, ebookit. If you buy it from ebookit you don't support the big tech companies and the author gets a bigger cut much sooner.


The audiobook is also available at all these vendors, and is also free with a 30-day trial membership to Audible.
 

"Not simply about one mission, [Genesis] is also the history of America's quest for the moon... Zimmerman has done a masterful job of tying disparate events together into a solid account of one of America's greatest human triumphs."--San Antonio Express-News

11 comments

  • Steve Richter

    Have any of the convicted Jan 6 protesters appealed their convictions based on 1st amendment grounds? The 1st amendment plainly states that the people have the right to peacefully assemble and petition government for redress of grievances. ( I see the “peaceably” word in the constitution as meaning you cannot assemble with the intent to fight the other side or government officials. ) Appeal the convictions to the supreme court on 1st amendment grounds. At a minimum, getting the court on record denying their appeal would have a far reaching affect on protest rallies, disruption of public meetings and civic disobedience activity. For that reason alone, the supreme court would not deny the appeal. Which then opens the door to arguments before the court, discussion of what protections the 1st amendment gives to protesters and a ruling by the court. Let’s see the liberal judges rule and explain that protesters who strike a police officer at a protest deserve prison time.

  • Chas

    I don’t understand why people like this feel a need to play dress up.. We are fighting an enemy that wants to molest our children and kill us, and guys like this think putting on colonial clothing will deter anyone… You just haven’t learned from the tea party ass kicking you received…. Wake the hell up..

  • Edward

    Steve Richterwrote: “
    Have any of the convicted Jan 6 protesters appealed their convictions based on 1st amendment grounds?

    It is worse than that. Many people were literally waved into the building by the Capitol Police. They were invited guests, then they were treated as enemies of the state. What a terrible thing to do to your invited guests. Shooting your guests is unacceptable, but that murderous police officer has been promoted.

    Chas wrote: “I don’t understand why people like this feel a need to play dress up..

    He was there to celebrate the system that peacefully transfers power. Very few countries can say that they have a quarter millennium of this practice.

    As Robert noted:
    His goal wasn’t solely to protest the election of Joe Biden. He was there as much to remind everyone where our freedoms came from, “to honor the memory and legacy” of our Founding Fathers.

    The Founding Fathers should be celebrated for putting together this system. It was a good invention, but the problem is like any other invention. A knife can be used to prepare dinner or can be used for evil. Right now, we have people wielding our government’s powers not for good but for their own evil intents.

  • Jeff Wright

    We lost the 4th with no-knock warrants.

    Meanwhile CHAZ and CHOP types are bailed out.

  • t-dub

    Owen Shroyer from InfoWars was just sentenced to 6 months in federal prison this morning. Every crime the government listed against him was speech. Things he said on air on his show or that day at the capitol. He never went in, didn’t even get close, and actually tried to diffuse the situation. We have reached a point where the corrupt deep state is openly disregarding our God given rights and imprisoning their enemies.

  • James Street

    The Genocide of Christians Is Escalating All Over the Planet, but Most Westerners Don’t Even Know It Is Happening
    • U.N. experts have appealed to India’s government over the ongoing violence in Manipur state, which has left 187 dead, 70,000 displaced and hundreds of churches destroyed amid ethnic and religious tensions.
    • Meanwhile, the U.S. government is being asked to intervene to prevent the genocide of 120,000 Armenian Christians by the Islamic government of Azerbaijan.
    • A mob attacked a Christian community in Pakistan’s Faislabad over accusations of desecrating a copy of the Holy Quran. Hundreds of people armed with sticks and rocks stormed a predominantly Christian area, vandalising several churches, cemetery and setting scores of houses on fire. Pakistani authorities have launched a probe into the matter and arrested nearly 150 people.
    • In neighboring Afghanistan, the Christian population has been reduced to an extremely low level because so many Christians fled the country once the Taliban took power.
    • Both Boko Haram and Muslim Fulani herders have targeted Christians in Nigeria; since 2009, at least 18,000 Christian churches and 2,200 Christian schools have been set ablaze, and five million Christians have been internally displaced.
    • The most dangerous place in the world to be a Christian is still North Korea, where a 2021 “Law Against Reactionary Thinking” subjects Christians to arrest, confinement in labor camps or even death.
    https://discernreport.com/the-genocide-of-christians-is-escalating-all-over-the-planet-but-most-westerners-dont-even-know-it-is-happening/

  • James Street quoted this headline: “The Genocide of Christians Is Escalating All Over the Planet, but Most Westerners Don’t Even Know It Is Happening.”

    I would amend that to say “Most Westerners don’t care that it is happening.” If they cared, they’d know about it and push for action. By not caring, they can look the other way.

  • Col Beausdabre

    Bob, You just don’t understand. Christians are the most terrible people on Earth andc so deserve everything that happens to them! Remember the Crusades!!

  • Jason

    I worry that in 5 or 10 or 20 years we will look back on these times with Solzhenitsyn’s same regrets:

    “What would things been like if during periods of mass arrests people had not simply sat there, paling with terror at every bang on the downstairs door and at every step on the staircase, but understood they had nothing to lose and had boldly set up in the downstairs hall an ambush of half a dozen people?”

    “If… if… We didn’t love freedom enough. And even more – we had no awareness of the real situation. We spent ourselves in one unrestrained outburst in 1917, and then we hurried to submit. We submitted with pleasure! ……….. We purely and simply deserved everything that happened afterward.”

  • Jason: I say yes to this quote, except that I am already looking back 10, 20, and even 40 years, when Americans could have taken even easier non-violent action to stop this stupidity. They didn’t, and thus the battle is now much harder, and getting harder all the time.

  • Edward

    Robert Zimmerman wrote: “Jason: I say yes to this quote, except that I am already looking back 10, 20, and even 40 years, when Americans could have taken even easier non-violent action to stop this stupidity. They didn’t, and thus the battle is now much harder, and getting harder all the time.

    Which brings up questions: What should Germans have done in the late 1920s and the 1930s to stop the genocide in their country? What about the 1940s, after it was clear it was happening? How do we Americans learn from Germany’s failure to act in time, and learn from their inaction what proper actions to take?

    Those who don’t learn from history are destined to get bit in the butt. Again.

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