Prison or mercy? A Jan. 6 rioter weighs his sins and confronts his fate.

Alone in his living room and free from custody as he awaited sentencing, Peart listened as a federal prosecutor summarized his offense: The 47-year-old real estate agent, husband and father of five had blown past police officers being “attacked violently,” the blaring of alarms and the smell of tear gas emanating from the seat of American democracy. Once inside the Capitol, he had banged on a broken piece of furniture, yelling, “This is our house!”

“I don’t know what would have happened if I had seen Mitt Romney,” Peart told the FBI, referring to the junior senator from his home state. “It’s probably a good thing that I didn’t see him because I would have been … who knows. I’ve never had that much adrenaline run through my body.”

Peart was one of thousands of American citizens who on Jan. 6, 2021, sought to overturn the 2020 election on behalf of an angry and defeated President Donald Trump. Collectively, the mob’s actions were “egregious, outrageous, dangerous,” the judge told Peart, calling them “a direct attack on the rule of law and democracy as we know it.”

But each of the insurrectionists in the Capitol that day was also an individual. And so before the judge delivered his decision, he described a letter in Peart’s case file from a woman who in 2013 was driving home drunk from a bar when she struck and killed Peart’s 28-year-old sister.

“A truly remarkable letter,” the judge called it.

In it, Andrea Milholm Jung described how the “mercy and love” that Peart had shown her after the accident and while she was in prison had helped her to find redemption. “Put yourself in Mr. Peart’s shoes and ask yourself if you would do the same,” she wrote to the judge. “It is a question I ask myself every single day.”

Peart sat quietly in his leather chair, his Bible at his side, awaiting his fate. From his window he could see the soaring peaks of southern Utah’s red-rock desert mountains.

The entire hearing had lasted a little more than an hour and now boiled down to just a few difficult questions: Was Peart truly repentant? Did he grasp the severity of his crime? Did he deserve prison or mercy?

On the morning of Jan. 6, Peart had gazed out on the monuments to America’s Founding Fathers and the flags snapping in the breeze. Peart had long been a reliable Republican voter. But this was his first Trump rally and his first-ever trip to the nation’s capital.

He sang the national anthem and recited the Pledge of Allegiance, and when the crowd surged toward the Capitol, Peart pulled a mask over his face to protect against the clouds of tear gas and joined them.

The rioters, who had traveled to Washington from red, blue and purple states, were a cross-section of White America, with few people of color. Some had been scarred by years of addiction, poverty, mental illness and abuse. But others, such as Peart, led relatively uneventful and prosperous lives. Most were heavy consumers of right-wing media, according to court documents. Peart favored talk radio hosts and podcasters such as Ben Shapiro, Dan Bongino and Joe Rogan.

Peart rushed past the toppled police barriers and scaled scaffolding to reach the Capitol. He told the judge at his sentencing that he was driven by a “state of desperation,” a conviction that the presidential election had been stolen and the country he loved was falling apart. He surged through the Senate wing doors about 19 seconds after they were breached, according to federal prosecutors.

“I felt like we were at a battle, standing up for our country,” Peart said. He draped a Trump flag over his shoulders and along with the crowd called for members of Congress to show themselves. “Where’s Mitt Romney?” he yelled.

A police officer told him to exit the building. “I don’t want to leave,” Peart replied. A part of him still believed that the embattled officers saw him and his fellow rioters as defenders of America’s democracy. A second officer approached. “You need to go,” he said, and escorted Peart to the door. The FBI estimated that he was in the building for about 30 minutes.

Standing in front of the besieged Capitol, Peart snapped a selfie and posted it to Facebook. His phone had just enough battery charge to call his wife, Rachel, in Utah. “I just went inside the Capitol!” he exulted.

She had been watching the mayhem unfold on her computer and was furious that he had put his life and his family’s well-being at risk.

“Stop talking!” his wife recalled telling him. “If you post anything, I will divorce you!”

In the moment, his wife’s anger and concern didn’t register. “She just doesn’t get it,” Peart recalled thinking as he took in the chaotic and, to his mind, thrilling scene. “She’s not here.”

At his hotel, Peart watched as news anchors and prominent Republican politicians condemned those inside the Capitol. His pride quickly gave way to a feeling of abandonment. “It Went Wrong! It went terribly wrong!” he wrote in a note that he saved on his phone. “BUT the cause, the purpose, the reason for the Protest was NOBLE! The people involved are GOOD — PEOPLE you would be PROUD to stand with!!!”

Peart flew home Jan. 7. In Utah, he and his wife waited anxiously for the FBI to show up and arrest him. After about a week, he decided to turn himself in. His first call was to John Tatum, the criminal defense attorney who in 2013 had represented Jung, the drunk driver who had killed his sister, Krista.

“I want to be held accountable,” Peart told the lawyer. Mostly, he wanted a chance to tell his side of the story.

The first time Jung met Peart, they were in a basement room at the Denver courthouse. The unusual meeting had come at the Peart family’s request. A few weeks after Krista’s death, Jung and Peart’s mother had exchanged letters.

Jung had struck Krista and her sister, Kelsy, who survived with serious injuries, as they were walking along the side of a narrow Denver street. “I’m so sorry I robbed your family of your beautiful daughter,” Jung wrote.

Peart’s mother, Ruth, responded by telling Jung about the small business Krista helped to run caring for four disabled women, and the joy she had found spending time in nature and with her nieces and nephews. “Krista would be the first person to forgive you,” Ruth wrote. “In fact I believe she has forgiven you.”

Before Jung went to jail, the Pearts wanted to meet the woman who had killed Krista. Jung broke down in sobs when she saw the Peart family seated around the large courthouse conference table. When Jung quieted, Jake Peart spoke first for his family. “We want you to move past this and have a happy life,” she recalled him saying.

Kelsy, who still had tar marks on her body from the road, said that she felt as if a part of her soul had been ripped away on the night Krista died.

Jung apologized for the pain she had inflicted and promised that she would work to ensure Krista’s death was not entirely “in vain.” Each of the Pearts then enveloped her in a hug.

About a half-hour later, they were all standing before the judge. Because Jung’s blood alcohol level at the time of the accident was nearly four times the legal limit, the district attorney had proposed a 10-year sentence. The Pearts pushed the prosecutor to ask for five years.

Ultimately, the decision was up to the judge, who gazed down on Jung, her parents, siblings and the Peart family. An audio recording captured the rest.

“I need to try to maintain some boundaries, and I tell you it’s hard,” the judge said before he handed down the sentence. He took a deep breath. “I’ve done more of these types of sentencings than I want to do. They’re the worst cases, the hardest cases,” he continued. “But I’ve never done a sentencing like this. The word that came to my mind was redemption.”

He ordered Jung to serve a five-year sentence. The sheriff’s deputy snapped on handcuffs. Jung let out an anguished cry, and the officer led her away.

In journals from prison, Jung wrote of her “indescribable guilt” and chronicled the indignities of incarceration. Among her biggest fears was freedom. “What if I let everyone down again?” she wrote.

Other inmates faced anger, recrimination and civil suits from those they had hurt in the commission of their crimes. Their guilt morphed into self-hatred and anger at the world. Jung received nothing but encouragement from the Peart family.

Krista’s father, Blair, wrote to Jung about a talk he gave at his church: “I told them that forgiveness was like a miracle and that it allowed the victims to be set free.”

Jake Peart wrote her monthly. “Thank you for giving your whole heart and soul to changing and doing everything you can to make amends for what has happened,” one letter read.

“We/I care about you and hope the very best for you,” he added in another.

Peart had drifted away from his church before Krista’s death. “I was very lost!” he wrote in one letter. “I had decided in my mind that God is whatever I wanted him to be.” The tragedy, Jung’s remorse and his family’s compassionate response, he believed, had helped him reconnect with the true spirit of his faith in the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, also known as the Mormon Church.

After about a year in prison, Jung was eligible for transfer to a halfway house. Some in Peart’s family worried she hadn’t spent enough time behind bars. Peart disagreed and at the request of Jung’s lawyer, Tatum, drafted a letter to the Denver Community Corrections Board advocating for her early release.

“I want what will be most beneficial to Andrea,” he wrote.

Jung left prison in April 2015. “It wouldn’t have happened if it had not been for Jake’s letter,” Tatum recalled.

Jung was making breakfast in late January 2021 in her Denver apartment when her watch vibrated, alerting her to a call from Tatum. It had been six years since she had emerged from Colorado’s La Vista Correctional Facility and more than 14 months since she had completed her probation. Jung was 32 years old, recently married and working for a nonprofit helping impoverished and homeless families qualify for benefits and find steady work. At night, she attended classes at the University of Colorado at Denver.

Her first thought upon seeing her attorney’s name was that she was somehow back in trouble with the law. Tatum told her he was calling about Jake Peart and Jan. 6.

“He may need your help,” he told her.

“Of course,” Jung replied.

She began drafting a letter for Peart a few days later. To Jung, the assault on the Capitol was a blight on American democracy. The mere sight of a Trump flag made her uneasy — “the perfect cocktail of confused, angry, sad and concerned,” she said. But the friends she had made in prison and the Pearts’ forgiveness had taught her not to judge people by their worst day. To Jung, Peart wasn’t an angry rioter or conspiracy-addled extremist. He was a man of faith — someone who, when she was at her lowest, showed her mercy and kindness that she was certain she did not deserve.

“It’s unfathomable for a family to look at the person who killed their daughter and sister while driving drunk and wish her a happy life, yet Jake Peart and his family did,” Jung wrote. “Because of Mr. Peart’s actions, I have been given a second chance to live a meaningful, productive life.”

Jung’s path to redemption began with an overwhelming feeling of guilt and a resolve to spend the rest of her life atoning for her mistake.

For Peart, the aftermath of the riot has been more complex. He felt bad that his actions caused some inside the Capitol to fear for their lives, and he regretted the physical damage to the building. But he hadn’t committed any violence or vandalism himself, he reasoned. And he continued to believe his cause was just, his motives pure — a view widely shared in his mostly rural Washington County, which Trump won with 74 percent of the vote.

In some parts of the country, Jan. 6 rioters came home to condemnation. They were fired from their jobs or ostracized by friends and family. At least three Jan. 6 defendants have died by suicide. Peart had the opposite experience. At church, in town and in business meetings people treated him like a hero, praising him for standing up for his country and often telling him that they wished they could have been in Washington that day. A friend from the family’s church handed him a $5,000 check to help with the costs of his defense. Peart returned it, saying that he was moved by the offer but didn’t need the help.

“More business was drawn to him for being a patriot, or whatever you call it,” recalled his wife, Rachel.

The public praise and looming possibility of prison throughout 2021 shaped Peart’s view of himself as a rebel against an overreaching government. He grew a beard and wore T-shirts that he believed matched his angrier, more confrontational persona. One favorite included a quote adapted from a George Washington address and warned, “If the freedom of speech is taken away, then dumb and silent we may be led, like sheep to the slaughter.”

He and Rachel attended a far-right conference in Salt Lake City in October 2021 that featured speakers such as retired Lt. Gen. Mike Flynn, Trump’s former national security adviser, and promised in promotional material to teach them how to “fight against the socialist, communist, Marxist ideologies that now permeate government, schools and the mainstream media.”

Peart couldn’t stop thinking about Jan. 6, which he worried was just one piece of a broader conspiracy. He had so many questions: Why had Trump urged his followers to go to the Capitol and then retreated to the White House? Why hadn’t leaders in Congress or the Pentagon demanded a bigger security presence that day? He had heard some right-wing podcasters suggest without evidence that House Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D-Calif.) had secretly allowed the riot to happen to distract attention from the problems with the vote.

He knew that he had broken the law, but a part of him still wanted to fight the government in court. “Nobody ever really seems to go after the people that really matter,” he said. “They don’t ever seem to be accountable before anybody.” He discussed it with his wife, Rachel, who wanted to put the entire Jan. 6 episode behind them. He discussed it with his lawyer, who warned him that taking his case to trial would be costly and would almost certainly end in a prison sentence.

In January 2022, Peart pleaded guilty to “parading, demonstrating, or picketing in the Capitol building,” a misdemeanor that carried a maximum penalty of six months in prison. The Justice Department recommended 30 days.

His sentencing was scheduled for May before Judge Paul L. Friedman. Peart’s attorney warned him that Friedman had been appointed to the bench by President Bill Clinton, attended Cornell University, a “liberal school,” and might not be sympathetic.

“Judge, this is criminal action 21-622, The United States versus Willard Jake Peart,” the courtroom deputy announced.

The prosecution quickly summarized Peart’s actions on Jan. 6 and his remarks to the FBI about Romney. Peart’s attorney pointed to his client’s decision to turn himself in as proof that he was remorseful. Peart talked about the beliefs that had propelled him first to Washington and then to the Capitol. “I wasn’t going necessarily to support President Trump,” he said. “I was going there because I was concerned about the election integrity of our country.”

None of the lawyers mentioned Jung’s letter — one of seven in the sentencing packet that Peart’s attorney had assembled for the judge. But before he handed down his sentence, Friedman paused to discuss it. He spoke about how Peart’s “compassion,” “forgiveness,” “mercy and love” had changed Jung’s life. “To me it says a lot about the kind of person Mr. Peart is, despite what he did and participated in on January 6th,” the judge said.

He spoke about the seriousness of the crimes committed at the Capitol: “We haven’t seen anything like this in a century or more … the fear that was instilled in police officers and in congresspersons and the fear for democracy and the rule of law.”

And he spoke about his responsibility to hold Peart accountable and deter other possible assaults on America’s democratic process. Amid all of these competing demands and uncertainties, the best he could deliver was “a kind of rough justice,” Friedman said. He then ordered Peart to serve 60 days of home detention, a relatively lenient sentence that required him to wear an ankle monitor and remain in his house with exemptions for work and church.

“I’m assuming, Mr. Peart, that I will not see you back in my courtroom, and your life will go on peacefully without any involvement with the criminal justice system,” Friedman said.

Peart felt a weight lift, grateful that the judge, some 2,300 miles away in Washington, had treated him with compassion.

“You have my word on that,” he replied.

Early last month, Peart rose to address the assembled commissioners in Washington County, where he lived. The elected officials, flanked by American and state flags, wore button-down shirts and rumpled, blue blazers.

“Jake!” exclaimed Victor Iverson, the commission’s chairman. “Good to see you, my friend!”

Peart had sworn off national politics in the seven months since his sentencing, put away his patriot-themed T-shirts and stopped listening to right-wing radio and podcasts. Still he couldn’t shake the feeling that dark forces were eating away at America’s democracy and that it was his responsibility as a good citizen to sound the alarm. He ran for school board on a platform of opposing federal intervention in schools, losing to a six-year incumbent. He also began speaking out at local government meetings like the one in Washington County.

Peart had known the commission chairman since they were neighbors two decades earlier and their families sometimes got together for game nights. Lately, though, he worried that his friend, like so many of the country’s elected officials, was letting the power of his office go to his head.

Each of the speakers during the public comment period were allotted two minutes. Peart had learned that if he spoke extemporaneously, he would forget some of what he wanted to say. So on this evening he had written down his remarks.

“We have a major problem right now with extreme division, hate and mistrust in our country, state, county and even our local cities and towns,” Peart began.

He then laid out some of his top grievances. He asked the commissioners why some land projects, such as solar fields, received quick approval, while road and other building projects languished for months. He questioned why it was so much easier to raise taxes than lower them. He complained about a Utah Republican Party fundraiser that was charging as much as $25,000 a ticket. “Do we really think that the person who contributes this kind of money doesn’t expect something in return?” he asked.

His biggest worry was the integrity of the election system. Sometimes when he paused to think about the allegations of hacked voting machines and manipulated mail-in ballots, he would admit that such schemes seemed implausible. They would, he knew, require the complicity of hundreds of people scattered across the country. But then he thought about the obscene amounts of money coursing through the political system and the seeming indifference elected officials showed their constituents. In that light, the allegations didn’t seem so crazy.

The county commissioners shuffled their papers. Peart forged ahead, rushing to get through his prepared remarks before his two minutes elapsed.

“When are you, as our elected officials, going to stop worrying about yourselves and those who are paying for you to get reelected, and start doing what you’re supposed to do?” he asked. His time was up.

“Thank you, Jake,” the commission chairman said flatly and called the next speaker, who like the previous five began complaining about the “absolute proof” of election fraud and the commissioners’ refusal to address it.

Peart, barely glancing up at his old friend, returned to his seat.

A week later Peart visited an 88-year-old client to run through some paperwork left over from the recent sale of her home. Monta Ballard was one of a relatively small number of Democrats in the area and one of only a few locals who had pressed Peart to explain his conduct at the Capitol.

The two had been looking over a bathroom in the house that Peart was helping her to sell. Ballard, who has the blunt manner of a person used to speaking her mind, recalled that her heart was pounding. She was nervous that Peart might react angrily to her questions about his role in the riot. But she felt like she couldn’t continue to do business with someone she didn’t trust. “What in the world were you doing there?” she had asked him. Peart had explained that he was worried about election fraud.

Now Ballard wanted to know whether he had kept his promise from their earlier meeting to do more research on the subject.

“I still don’t trust our voting system. I think there’s funny business,” Peart told her. “I could be wrong.”

“You said you’d check on it,” she chided, and reminded him that Trump and his allies had filed and lost more than 60 lawsuits related to the 2020 vote.

“I haven’t studied the cases,” Peart apologized.

Before Peart left, she urged him to seek out sources beyond Fox News and his social media feed. But Peart was skeptical it would make much difference. “I don’t know how to find a source that isn’t an echo chamber,” he told her.

Later that evening, Peart was attending an auction and potluck dinner for his son Tad’s wrestling team when a friend approached and thanked him for his comments at the county commission meeting.

“I’ve got an article I want to share with you,” he said.

Peart read it when he got home. It began with a prophecy sometimes attributed to Joseph Smith, founder of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints: “The Constitution is hanging by a thread.” Then it continued with some commentary about socialist-Marxist politicians and the end of America. “Our country is bankrupt digging itself further into the bondage of indebtedness,” Peart read. “And now the very free-enterprise system that has brought us the potential to earn our way out of the mess is being dismantled. Soon the war will begin.”

The dark prophecy seemed at odds with the reality of Peart’s everyday life in southern Utah. He lived atop a hill, in a five-bedroom home with views of snow-covered mountains and the Hurricane Valley. He had healthy children and a wife with a boisterous laugh who loved him. “We’re in a pretty good place. I’m certainly not struggling,” he said to himself. “So why do I have this worry?”

He thought about the “liberal” judge from his sentencing who had weighed his rash conduct on Jan. 6 against the compassion he had shown Jung nearly eight years earlier. “The judge was awesome,” Peart said.

And he thought about Jung, who had come to his aid even though she had been appalled by the Capitol riot.

Jung and Peart hadn’t communicated much since the letter she wrote nearly two years earlier urging the judge to show him mercy. In a Thanksgiving weekend email, Peart told Jung that he had been thinking for several months about sending her a “short note of gratitude” but had “brushed it off.” He didn’t want to intrude on her life or force her to think about Krista’s death. “[You] would rather all the memories of this would go away,” he wrote.

The sentiment made her “really sad,” Jung said. “This will never go away for me, even if the Pearts decide they don’t want to talk to me anymore.” Her repentance required remembering Krista and the Pearts’ gift to her of mercy and forgiveness.

Peart was reaching a similar conclusion with regard to the Capitol riot and its aftermath. “We all need mercy. I need mercy as much as anybody else,” he said. “That’s a major lesson I need to learn.”

He tried to put all of his thoughts into a letter that he sent to his son Seth, who was away on his church mission in Oregon.

“I taught you incorrectly,” he began. “For some time now I’ve been reflecting seriously on my thoughts, words and actions. I’m realizing that I am not acting out of love. The trigger for me to be judgmental and even mean is when I meet someone who has different beliefs. I start to think they are wrong [and] their ideas are stupid or harmful to my way of life. … For now I am thinking and feeling that it’s very important for me to be more aware and much more cautious with the things I say and do.”

Before Peart, his wife and his two youngest sons turned in for bed that night, they gathered in the living room for their evening prayer. They had been focusing of late on the Old Testament. Peart read aloud the story of three Israelites — Shadrach, Meshach and Abednego — who had refused to worship King Nebuchadnezzar’s golden icon and were cast into a fiery furnace. At the last moment, God rewarded their faith and shielded them from the flames.

Peart noted that the men didn’t know whether God would save them when they refused the king’s order. They had resolved to serve their Lord no matter the consequences. “I love their confidence,” he told his sons.

Sometimes Peart still questioned whether he was right to plead guilty for his conduct on Jan. 6, instead of fighting in court and trying to expose the election fraud that he continued to worry was plaguing his country. “We need to be true to ourselves regardless of what happens,” he mused to his family.

This was one lesson from the brave Israelites’ story. His experiences over the last two years had left him wondering if it was the right one. The facts of the Jan. 6 riot have been documented in more than 14,000 hours of video surveillance from the Capitol, hundreds of hours of congressional testimony and millions of pages of documents. The truth was out there, available for all to see. But Peart still didn’t know who to trust. Nor, it seemed, did the country.

Peart was in the same chair that he had been sitting in during his sentencing hearing, in a part of America where many still questioned the outcome of the 2020 election and viewed the rioters’ cause as legitimate.

He fingered his leather-bound Bible and struggled to reconcile the fearful far-right voices that he had long relied on with his comfortable life, the federal judge’s compassion and, most of all, Jung’s kindness and mercy.

“I know who my God is,” Peart said. “But I’m still figuring out who I am.”

Alice Crites contributed to this report.