A convicted Jan. 6 rioter was one of the “journalists” picked by Pete Hegseth to attend the defense secretary’s bad-tempered Iran war briefing.
During the violent storming of the Capitol in January 2021, Brandon Straka had yelled “go, go, go” as rioters pushed toward the building, and urged a member of the crowd to seize a police officer’s shield, shouting “take it, take it.”
In a Stop the Steal group chat, Straka messaged fellow organizers as the Capitol was being overrun: “F--k no!! I’m at the Capitol and just joined the breach!!! I just got gassed! Never felt so f-----g alive in my life!!!”
Straka pleaded guilty in October 2021 to a federal misdemeanor charge of disorderly and disruptive conduct on Capitol grounds.
Donald Trump appointee Judge Dabney L. Friedrich sentenced him in January 2022 to three years of probation, three months of home detention, a $5,000 fine, and $500 in restitution. Trump then granted a full pardon on Jan. 21, 2025.
Straka, who has since touted Trump’s support to boost his career as a “media personality,” said he was given a “front row seat” to the Defense Department’s briefing on Monday.
He posted a photograph to X of himself in the Pentagon briefing room wearing a bright red PRESS lanyard, announcing he was about to be briefed by the defense secretary on U.S. military strikes against Iran.
Straka was among a cohort of handpicked pro-Trump media figures now constituting the Pentagon’s replacement press pool, after much of the mainstream press corps walked out rather than sign a restrictive Pentagon gag order last October.
Outlets that signed the policy and retained access include One America News, The Federalist, and The Epoch Times. Those who joined the pool after major organizations such as Fox News, The New York Times, and Reuters refused to comply include The Gateway Pundit, The Post Millennial, Turning Point USA’s Frontlines, The Daily Signal, and The Daily Caller.
Lindell TV—the channel set up by MyPillow founder Mike Lindell—and conservative video host Tim Pool, who streams as Timcast, were also present.
Despite Monday’s briefing on Operation Epic Fury being mostly full of patsies, it still proved fractious.
Hegseth dressed down his own chosen reporters on several occasions, at one point declaring: “Going forward, why would we tell you—you, the enemy, anybody—what we will or will not do?”
When NBC News’ Courtney Kube managed to slip in a question about the potential duration of the Iran campaign, Hegseth dismissed it as “a typical NBC sort of, gotcha type question.”
The Daily Beast has contacted the Department of Defense and Straka for comment.
