Jensen is accused of leading a group of rioters at the Capitol on January 6 who chased Capitol Police Officer Eugene Goodman. He was also allegedly carrying a knife at the time.
He had been jailed for six months following the Capitol riot but was granted pretrial release in July over the objections of the government but one condition of that release was that he could not use devices that were connected to the internet.
In a filing on Thursday, prosecutors said that Jensen had violated this condition by watching Lindell’s cyber symposium on an iPhone and asked that he be sent back to jail.
Lindell has consistently claimed that the 2020 presidential election was stolen from former President Donald Trump and his symposium was intended as a showcase of evidence proving that claim.
However, Lindell’s event proved something of a disappointment when he did not produce evidence of mass voter fraud changing the election’s outcome.
Prosecutors wrote: “A mere thirty days after his release from the D.C. Jail defendant Douglas Jensen was found alone, in his garage, using a WiFi-connected iPhone to stream news from Rumble.”
Rumble is a video sharing platform which has become popular among some conservatives as an alternative to YouTube.
Jensen’s pretrial services officer reportedly discovered his use of the iPhone during a check on him and he offered “one excuse after another,” according to the court filing.
“Jensen eventually admitted to his Pretrial Services Officer that in the previous week, he had spent two days watching Mike Lindell’s Cyber Symposium regarding the recount of the presidential election,” prosecutors wrote.
Jensen had previously confessed to believing in the QAnon conspiracy theory, which the government cited when it argued that he should be jailed before trial. However, Jensen’s attorney told the court in June that Jensen “feels deceived, recognizing that he bought into a pack of lies.”
In the Thursday filing, prosecutors said that “Jensen’s swift violation confirms what the Government and this Court suspected all along: that Jensen’s alleged disavowal of QAnon was just an act; that his alleged epiphany inside the D.C. Jail was merely self-advocacy; and that, at the end of the day, Jensen will not abandon the misguided theories and beliefs that led him to menacingly chase U.S. Capitol Police Officer Eugene Goodman up the Senate staircase on January 6, 2021.”
“He has proven that not even six months in jail will deter him from returning to the conspiracy theories that led him to commit an assault against a federal officer on January 6, 2021. Contrary to what Jensen claimed at his bond hearing, he is still very much bought into QAnon’s ‘pack of lies’,” the filing said.
Jensen’s wife had undertaken to supervise him and make sure he followed the conditions of his release but the government argued she had “left the iPhone on for the defendant when she went to work on August 13, thereby facilitating his violation” and was an “an unsuitable and untrustworthy custodian.”
“Thus, even if the Court were inclined to keep defendant on pretrial release, there are no suitable third-party custodians to supervise Jensen,” prosecutors said.
The government is seeking to have Jensen returned to jail to await trial. He is expected to file a response early next week.
Newsweek has asked the Department of Justice for comment.
