John Sullivan, a.k.a. Jayden X, is a civil rights activist who donned a bulletproof vest and embedded himself in the masses that President Trump had incited to storm the U.S. Capitol.
The FBI arrested and charged Sullivan today with “one count of knowingly entering or remaining in any restricted building or grounds without lawful authority, one count of violent entry and disorderly conduct on Capitol grounds, and one count of interfering with law enforcement engaged in the lawful performance of their official duties incident to and during the commission of civil disorder.”
Trump supporters and Republicans are wasting no time blaming the entire riot on Sullivan, who actually spent the chaos recording was happening.
He captured now-notorious figures from the riot, including the shirtless, face-painted “QAnon Shaman.”
And the bearded rioter dressed in a grotesquely anti-Semitic “Camp Auschwitz” sweatshirt.
Crucially, Sullivan’s camerawork captured the shooting of 35-year-old mob member and Air Force veteran Ashli Babbitt, who was killed by the Capitol Police while attempting to clamber through a broken window into the Speaker’s Lobby off the House floor.
The 26-year-old is a resident of Utah, and a former competitive speed skater who participated in the 2018 Olympic trials, who is no fan of institutional politics.
“I’ve never voted,” he told Rolling Stone, “because I don’t believe in the two-party system” — but he found purpose in the street protests that followed the killing of George Floyd, even founding an activist group called Insurgence USA that fights for racial justice.
Sullivan’s activism has brought him legal trouble: He faces riot and criminal mischief charges stemming from a BLM protest in Provo, Utah, last June.
He says he’s become a target of far-right militants he calls “chuds.”
Laughably, he’s also become the centerpiece of Trump supporters and right-wing media who are insisting that Sullivan ‘made MAGA do it.’
In reality, Donald Trump incited the mob, and his supporters attacked the Capitol.
Over 100 Trump supporters have been arrested as of today according to the FBI.
