Stewart Parks is now looking at eight months in federal prison for, among other things, being in the U.S. Capitol on January 6, 2021. He is marked by the Left as an “insurrectionist” on a conviction of five federal charges.
The 30-year-old Nashville man was sentenced on Wednesday by, according to Parks, a vindictive U.S. district court judge who helped the prosecution work out its case against him in the trial.
“I’m shocked,” Parks told The Tennessee Star in an exclusive interview. “The D.C. courts are prejudiced against Christian conservative, pro-Trump, pro-America Republicans.”
D.C. Circuit Court Judge Amit P. Mehta, who has presided over several trials related to the January 6 Capitol riots, sentenced Parks to a total of 3 years on misdemeanor trespassing, disorderly conduct, and theft charges, but he will serve his sentence concurrently, reducing his term to eight months behind bars.
He’s expected to turn himself in sometime in February.
Parks, who has been represented by a Washington, D.C. public defender, plans to appeal his conviction and his sentencing. On advice of counsel, Parks chose to be tried in a bench trial, rather than a jury trial. Judge Mehta presided over the bench trial, and found Parks guilty of five misdemeanors on May 3, 2023.
Parks, who ran unsuccessfully for the Republican nomination in Tennessee’s 5th Congressional District seat in August 2022, asserts the evidence of his trial “proved” he was not guilty. He claims Mehta, an Obama appointee, “colluded” with the prosecutors and identified the defendant by the wrong name when sentencing him late Wednesday afternoon in the D.C. Court.
“To me, the writings on the wall,” he said.
Born and raised in Nashville, Parks graduated from Volunteer Community College with an associates degree, then obtained a bachelor’s degree in economics from the University of Mississippi.
“I’ve been involved in real estate pretty much since the age of 18. I own several real estate companies here in Nashville. I love Southern history. I’ve proudly restored two historic properties in the 5th District, one in downtown Columbia and the other in Cornersville, Tennessee, right there on the main road there,” Parks told The Star in an earlier interview.
Parks finished in eighth place out of nine candidates who ran in the August 2022 Republican primary in Tennessee’s Fifth Congressional District, receiving one percent of the vote. Rep. Andy Ogles (R-TN-5) won the primary, went on to win the November 2022 general election, and was sworn in as a member of the U.S. House of Representatives in January 2023.
According to his United States District Court biography, “Judge Amit P. Mehta was appointed to the United States District Court for the District of Columbia on December 22, 2014. Born in Patan, India, Judge Mehta received his B.A. in Political Science and Economics from Georgetown University in 1993 and his J.D. from the University of Virginia School of Law in 1997.”
‘Peacefully Present’
What is not in dispute is the fact that Parks was in Washington, D.C., on January 6, 2021. He was at the Capitol, speaking out against what he said he believes was a rigged election — stolen from Republican President Donald Trump for Democrat Joe Biden. Trump declared as much. So did a lot of attorneys, politicians, and conservatives across the country.
Parks attended the protest with his friend Matthew Baggott of Murfreesboro. Baggot was originally charged alongside Parks. In the summer of 2022, Baggott took a plea deal and was sentenced to three months in prison, one year of supervised release, 60 hours of community service, and an order to pay $500 in restitution.
Parks, like Baggott, was charged with entering or remaining in a restricted building or grounds without lawful authority, disorderly conduct in a restricted building or grounds, disorderly conduct in a Capitol building, and parading, demonstrating, or picketing within any of the Capitol buildings.
Parks was also charged with theft of government property, for picking up a metal detector wand and walking around with it for a while.
An army of assistant U.S. attorneys and their assistants used the full force of the government to prosecute him.
Parks told The Star News Network CEO and Editor-in-Chief Michael Patrick Leahy on The Tennessee Star Report radio program in April 2022 during his Congressional campaign, “I was peacefully present on January 6th.”
According to the criminal complaint, an unidentified (the name is redacted) special agent with the Federal Bureau of Investigation’s Memphis Field Office investigated Parks. The agent was — and may still be — assigned to the Joint Terrorism Task Force that investigates domestic and international terrorism acts. Much of the evidence in the case was brought by “several” unidentified witnesses who observed posts on Parks’ Instagram account.
“Video surveillance footage from inside the Capitol building shows PARKS and BAGGOTT entering the Capitol building at approximately 2:13 p.m. on January 6, 2021. PARKS and BAGGOTT move throughout the Capitol building for approximately a half hour, until approximately 2:46 p.m. when they exited the building. During that time, PARKS and BAGGOTT generally remain together, with PARKS carrying yellow Gadsden flag, often with PARKS holding onto BAGGOTT’s backpack …” the complaint states.
But Parks, like many others at the Capitol that day, said Capitol Police let him in.
“I was unarmed. Surveillance video shows me peacefully standing there. The evidence that the government presented to hurt me, any normal people observing would say, ‘Stewart was innocent,’” Parks said.
‘Working with the Prosecutors’
Parks said Mehta, the judge, was apoplectic over his testimony on the stand during the trial.
“He berated me, screamed at me, and stormed out of the courtroom during my testimony,” Parks said. “He didn’t want the truth to come out and tried to discredit me and my testimony.”
Mehta, has presided over several of the January 6 related “insurrection” trials, handing down stiff sentences (but not quite stiff enough for prosecutors) in the Oath Keepers convictions. He’s also the presiding judge in the internationally watched Google trial testing its omnipresent search engine’s dominance.
Mehta’s office did not return a phone message Friday seeking comment.
Parks claims Mehta was “working with the prosecutors,” helping them when they bungled through parts of their case.
“He colluded, he coached, he blatantly sided and was open-armed with the prosecution,” he said, calling his bench trial a completely one-sided affair.
At sentencing, Parks said that the judge repeatedly called him “Matthew Baggott,” his co-defendant who was ultimately prosecuted separately.
“We were very confused,” he said. “My attorney said he was shocked that the judge kept using the wrong name during his rant against me.”
Parks’ attorney, public defender John Machado, declined to comment for the record.
As for the theft charge against him, the complaint states that at approximately 2:45 p.m. that day, “Parks picks up a hand-held metal detector wand from a table and then puts it back. Approximately 20 seconds later, as more people are exiting the building, PARKS picks the wand up again and exits with it.”
Prosecutors accused the defendant of having no respect for law enforcement authorities. But Parks said he didn’t steal the wand. He left it in the Capitol. Prosecutors acknowledge that the wand was not missing. Yet, they tried to make Parks pay for a metal detector that was not stolen. The judge ruled in Parks’ favor.
| Editor’s Note: Those video comments were captured and saved on a social media account not controlled by MacFarlane. MacFarlane’s original posting does not appear to be currently available on his X, formerly Twitter, account. The Star reached out to MacFarlane to confirm the authenticity of these video comments and asked where they are currently posted. MacFarlane has not yet responded. |
Scott MacFarlane, a CBS Congressional correspondent who also follows the trials of J6 defendants, provided comments on his private social media account on May 3, 2023 about his own views on Parks as well as statements made by Judge Mehta earlier that day when he pronounced Parks guilty of all five misdemeanors.
“For anybody who is angry or frustrated, not just by what happened here on January 6, 2021, but how some of the defendants seek to alibi their actions or defend their actions, or blame police for some of what occured during the Capitol riot, your voice was channeled today by D.C. Federal Judge Amit Mehta. Of all the hearings I’ve covered and all the January 6th cases I’ve covered, I have rarely, if ever, heard a judge more forceful and frank in his denunciations of what a defendant had argued and what a defendant had said,” McFarland said of Mehta’s comments to Parks in court that day. (emphasis added)
“It was trial week this week in the case of Stewart Parks of Tennessee. According to prosecutors Parks was not only in the Capitol for quite a period of time January 6, but was near the frontlines, and stole one of those wands police use as magnetometers, one of those hand-held wands. He allegedly stole it before leaving the Capitol. According to the judge today, Parks argued on the stand that he didn’t realize he was in restricted areas on January 6 while amid the mob, while amid the riot, and had argued that police hadn’t clearly directed or ordered him to leave. The judge responded to that in two different ways. First of all, in issuing his verdict today the judge found Stewart Parks guilty on all five counts. At multiple times, he seemed to gather himself, the judge did, to reflect on his thoughts, and then chastised, dressed down Parks, for making those arguments. At one point the judge says, ‘I don’t know if you take me for a fool,’ and then said, “You cannot be serious,’ and said, ‘It’s charitable to say your testimony is not credible, if not a complete fabrication.’ (emphasis added)
“Stewart Parks will go for sentencing in late summer before the same judge, Amit Mehta. I underscore this case because it’s got some unique factors to it. First of all, Stewart Parks, after his arrest, attempted to get the nomination in Tennessee for a U.S. House seat, to win office here. But also, Stewart Parks sought a change of venue. He wanted this case moved out of D.C., saying D.C. jurors can’t be fair they’re too politically biased. Didn’t get it, so he asked for a bench trial by judge, thinking the judge might be more sympathetic to his argument,” MacFarlane concluded.
Disparate Treatment
The Left has used the riots of January 6, 2021, as a political cudgel against conservatives, particularly its public enemy No. 1: Trump. Democrats in the House led nationally televised hearings on what they described as an assault on democracy, nothing short of a coup. They insisted it was a coordinated campaign to overthrow the results of the election.
But as Reuters reported a year after the protests, the FBI found scant evidence that the disorder at the U.S. Capitol was the result of an organized plot to overturn the presidential election result.
“Ninety to ninety-five percent of these are one-off cases,” a former senior law enforcement official with knowledge of the investigation told the news organization. “Then you have five percent, maybe, of these militia groups that were more closely organized. But there was no grand scheme with Roger Stone and Alex Jones and all of these people to storm the Capitol and take hostages.”
That’s not to say things didn’t turn violent. Approximately 140 police officers were reportedly injured. An officer died from a stroke the day after January 6. Unarmed Air Force veteran Ashli Babbitt was fatally shot inside the Capitol by a Capitol Hill police officer who was never indicted, and two protesters died from heart attacks.
As of October, Biden’s Department of Justice reported that more than 1,069 people had been charged in connection with the January 6, 2021 unrest. Of those, the Justice Department said 935 people were charged with entering or remaining in a restricted area on federal property, including 103 who entered with a dangerous weapon.
Earlier this year, the Washington, D.C., Department of Corrections reported 21 people locked in the city’s jail awaiting a trial on charges related to the riot.
Parks said he thinks about them often.
“Fortunately for me, I was released on my own bond. There are people still sitting in jail waiting. Some of them are serving a longer sentence than what they would had they not fought it,” he said. “They’re being treated way worse than I have been. They can’t be with their families. They’re suffering.”
He sees disparate treatment, an unequal system of justice, in how the demonstrators on January 6 have been treated compared to pro-Palestinian/Hamas protestors who clashed with Capitol Police on Wednesday evening — not long after Parks was sentenced in the D.C. courtroom.
“Approximately 150 protesters were illegally and violently protesting,” the U.S. Capitol Police wrote on X. Its said six officers were treated for injuries, “ranging from minor cuts to being pepper sprayed to being punched.”
Parks is in the opening stages of his appeal. He’s hoping the appeals court will grant him a stay while he fights his conviction and sentence. He is awaiting an appellate public defender to be assigned to his case.
He advised anyone with ears to “stay out of the D.C. court system.”
He said he’ll never stop fighting.
“A lot of admirable figures in history have went to jail in times of evil,” Parks said. “Sometimes good people have to go to prison in standing up for what they believe.”
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M.D. Kittle is the National Political Editor for The Star News Network.
Photo “Stewart Parks” by Stewart Parks. Background Photo “January 6 Riot” by TapTheForwardAssist. CC BY-SA 4.0.
