MAGA insurrectionist Zachary Alam, convicted in federal court last year on eight felonies and three misdemeanors for attacking cops during the January 6th, 2021 Capitol riot – but then pardoned and released just weeks into his eight year bid when convicted felon President Trump returned to power on January 20th of this year – is going back soon after a Virginia jury found him guilty of breaking-entering and grand larceny over a May 8th incident, the Richmond Times-Dispatch reports.
The dipshit broke into a Henrico County home on May 8th while the homeowner, Davon Smith, was in the shower. Smith heard someone “rifling” through the guest room. When Smith confronted him, Alam claimed he was with Xfinity sent to fix the wifi, then changed his story and said he was looking for his Airbnb rental. Doorbell camera footage captured Smith ejecting Alam from the house through the front door. Prosecutors said Alam had stolen electronics and jewelry during the break-in and, this detail is somewhat confusing, he returned to the home later to retrieve some of those items.
Alam faces up to 40 years in the joint when he’s sentenced, 20 max on each count. While that’s no joke and the crime was indeed “serious,” the scare quotes are there as that’s mostly in the legal, technical sense. It is not very serious compared to an actual violent crime or, to put it bluntly, there is no Laken Riley in this situation and that’s why Alam’s case flew mostly under the media’s radar.
Certain major influencers on the left have been complaining about that, not so much coverage of Alam’s case specifically, but to a general disparity borne of their very sloppy understanding of the facts, requiring what’s going to be a somewhat lengthy takedown and rant on said sloppiness here.
Said former Obama campaign/White House speechwriter and now Pod Save America host Jon Favreau on the May 29th edition of his show (the above embed is fast-forwarded to the segment):
Remember he pardoned all of the January 6 rioters many of whom were convicted of assaulting police officers, journalists – like really badly – and they’re all free now. And by the way, he frees those people, one who was convicted of assaulting a police officer has been convicted again of soliciting a minor online.
Another, who was convicted of assaulting a police officer was convicted after this person was released by Trump of sexually assaulting a minor. Another also convicted of assaulting a police officer, freed by Trump, has been convicted of reckless homicide after drunk driving. So these are people, these are criminals Trump freed who should not have been because they violently assaulted police officers and journalists…
Concurred Favreau’s co-host, former Obama White House Senior Advisor Dan Pfeiffer:
This is where a little bit of the media disparity comes into play. And I know that this whataboutism is could be very frustrating, but I think it’s illustrative to make a larger point about how the media world works and how we’re getting outgunned. Imagine a world in which Joe Biden had pardoned some Black Lives Matters protesters who had been convicted certainly not even convicted of any of peaceful protest, right?
Not convict nothing like burning graffiti, whatever, right? Whatever had pardoned them and then one of them had assaulted a child or killed someone in a car accident. Can you imagine what the political environment would be like? Every person in America would know this happened. Every single person. It would be it would be 24-hour coverage on every right-wing media channel and and show and then also then it would move to CNN and everywhere and all and all the corporate media and all the legacy media would all cover it and it would be a big thing. There’d be hearings. Every Democrat would be asked to whether they disavow Biden’s pardons. Yep. They would there someone would be forced, you know, some like Gerald Nadler or someone would be forced like pressured into putting a censure motion into place.
Then again last month Favreau said more or less the same thing on the show, then started tweeting about it, which goaded Ted Cruz into reacting and stupidly not even trying to correct him:
Senator, thank you for finally criticizing Donald Trump over his Jan 6 pardons.
This is, appallingly, the first time you’ve ever commented on the issue https://t.co/TkyzNeoJJt
— Jon Favreau (@jonfavs) September 10, 2025
Naturally Mediaite covered this shitposting fight with glee and, sur-fucking-prise, they didn’t point out the problems with Favreau’s complaining either – though to be fair they did correctly note futher down that “after receiving their pardons, Zachary Alam and Brent John Holdridge have both been picked up for burglary. Alam was arrested for an alleged home invasion, while Holdridge has been charged in connection with the theft of tens of thousands of dollars in copper wire.”
And that’s it. Those are the only two insurrectionists who have actually been arrested for crimes committed after they were pardoned on January 20th, 2025. Even then Holdridge doesn’t actually count because he got out in January or February 2022 after doing 60 days for a misdemeanor parading charge. The pardon had no bearing on his stupid crime of stealing copper wire.
Some telling replies to this one!
Yes, the politician who has released more dangerous criminals from prison than anyone else is…Donald Trump pic.twitter.com/jGvwh9WUrk
— Jon Favreau (@jonfavs) September 10, 2025
To lay it out in detail, here’s what Favreau got wrong on May 29th:
• The one he says had “been convicted again, of soliciting a minor online”? That’d be Andrew Taake, kind of a unique edge case in terms of the Trump Regime’s irresponsible dipshittery: Taake had in January 2021 been wanted on a 2016 warrant in Texas for soliciting an undercover cop he thought was a 15 year-old girl, a warrant that was still open when he was sprung three years into a six year federal bid for assaulting cops during the insurrection. The DOJ even reportedly ignored Texas law enforcement’s request to hold Taake after the pardon and it took 17 days for them to track him down. Taake was not convicted until last month when he pleaded guilty to the soliciting a minor charge. A Texas court sentenced him to time served because of the three years he did in federal before the pardon and required him to register a sex offender for the next 10 years (That could and should have been a political liability for Trump given the nature of the open warrant and the fact that Texas cops were ignored when they had asked that Taake remain held – and Jamie Raskin might want to keep a Post-It note on that. But again, like every one of these cases – except for Zach Alam’s – Taake’s actual crime was committed completely independently of Trump’s pardon).
• The other MAGA pedo “who was convicted of assaulting a police officer after this person was released by Trump of sexually assaulting a minor”? That would be – according CREW’s also not very useful list – Theodore Middendorf, doing 19 years in an Illinois prison on a 2024 conviction for sexually penetrating a 7 year-old child. The assault occurred in 2018, so Favreau’s wrong again, even on the timing of the convictions: Middendorf pleaded guilty to the rape charge in the spring of 2024 and then, via Zoom and from inside an Illinois prison, the Capitol charge in August 2024.
• “Another also convicted of assaulting a police officer, freed by Trump, has been convicted of reckless homicide after drunk driving”? That would be another Illinoisan, Shane Jason Woods, who during the insurrection ripped a female Capitol cop of her bike and then later trashed media equipment as the tantrum was dying down. Facing federal prison ahead of his plea hearing, Woods in November 2022 drunkenly tried to kill himself by driving the wrong way on I-55, succeeding only in killing an innocent 35 year-old woman. Woods has been behind bars every single day since then and was sentenced in August to 17 years minus time served after the jury had in April convicted him of reckless homicide. It was a small reprieve as the DA had originally hit him with murder in the first.
The media and Dems dropped the ball on Taake not being handed over to Texas cops and Pfeiffer’s complaint very easily could have been applied to that very narrow situation. The rest of this is so badly and wrongly overblown, especially as Favreau and other libs on Twitter had been passing around CREW’s meaningless list. Yes, Trump pardoned sex offenders, another drunk driving murderer separate from Shane Woods (a misdemeanant who had already pleaded guilty to her Capitol charges before the January 2022 crash), and deranged domestic terrorists named by CREW.
Trump also pardoned insurrectionists like Daryl Johnson, who served six months after he was convicted of setting up his phone to record a customer getting naked at a tanning salon owned by his dad. John G Andries, who violently assaulted a woman in a bar after she told him to leave her alone. He pardoned Matthew Beddingfield who in January 2021 was out on bond awaiting trial for (non-fatally) shooting another teenager in the head in a Walmart parking lot in 2019. He pardoned Jia Liu, a Marine reservist who was arrested in 2022 for selling fake COVID vax cards to other Jarheads. The list of offenders who crimed separate and apart from the insurrection goes on and on.
Was anyone ever shocked that those fanatically loyal to a corrupt, sexually abusive tyrant would also turn out to be less than paragons of personal virtue in non-political contexts of their lives?
Or just shitty dog owners? (CREW and Favreau missed this guy, he’d already done his time too).
Approximately 223 Capitol rioters were released from either federal prison while serving their sentences or the DC lockup while awaiting trial or sentencing on violent felonies committed during the insurrection. As many as another 450 were either being sought by federal law enforcement on felony complaints or awaiting trial elsewhere. So in total in the other universe where Kamala Harris is the 47th president there are somewhere between 400 and 700 January 6th rioters behind bars.
ONE of them, count it, ONE of them in this universe went on to commit a felony: Zach Alam.
Amen. pic.twitter.com/aAZlzFNw2U
— Zach Alam (@HelmetBoyJ6) March 5, 2025
After Matthew Huttle – yet another rioter who had already done his time before the pardon – was shot dead by cops in Indiana in January, National Zero wrote that “it took all of SIX DAYS for one of these guys to fuck up. Are we even going to make it until Valentine’s Day before one of the rioters Trump freed from prison does straight up kill a cop or a white sorority girl…?”
In retrospect that seems mildly tasteless. That Zach Alam was unarmed and just trying to steal shit instead of unloading an AR-15 clip into Davon Smith and his family is a good thing. Unlike our lessers on the other side, we in the non-MAGA media should NOT be amped to get a Laken Riley or Iryna Zarutska from one of the violent pieces of shit unambiguously freed by Trump. And we should DEFINITELY under no circumstances whatsoever be freaking making shit up to spin it like there is.