John Herbert Strand, the former model and actor who went to the U.S. Capitol on Jan. 6 to defend Dr. Simone Gold of America’s Frontline Doctors, was ordered released on July 15 following a U.S. Supreme Court ruling blocking the application of a 20-year felony obstruction charge.
U.S. District Judge Christopher Cooper Granted Strand’s motion for release is his second since February and comes just weeks after the Supreme Court issued a ruling that severely limited the obstruction of justice charges brought against him and 354 other defendants on Jan. 6.
Gold, a friend of Strand’s who was serving a 60-day jail sentence for misdemeanor counts of entering and remaining in a restricted building or grounds, praised Strand’s honesty after learning of the release order.
“Who is the God that will deliver you out of my hand?”
“He was offered a misdemeanor plea once,” Gold said in an interview with The Blaze News. “He said, ‘I’m going to walk into the fire,’ and he walked into the fire. He’s never regretted it. So he’s a true hero in a time when we need heroes.”
Strand, 41, of Naples, Florida, must complete a 12-month sentence for four misdemeanor counts he was charged with on Jan. 6, with a release date of July 24. Strand was originally sentenced to 32 months in prison.
Gold said Strand might take his release by recalling the miracles of three Old Testament figures who inspired him during the long ordeal of Jan. 6.
Strand said she loves the story of Shadrach, Meshach and Abednego, found in Daniel chapter 3.
The Book of Daniel describes how three men who refused to worship a giant golden idol at the command of the Babylonian king Nabuchadnosor (also spelled Nebuchadnezzar) were tightly bound and thrown into a blazing furnace.
“Who is the God that will deliver you out of my hand?” asked the king.
But the flames did not consume Shadrach, Meshach, and Abednego. Daniel writes that an angel extinguished the fire and “made it like a dewy wind in the furnace, so that the fire did not touch them.”
John Strand records Dr. Simone Gold speaking in Statuary Hall at the U.S. Capitol. Strand was working as Dr. Gold’s bodyguard on January 6, 2021.(CCTV/U.S. Capitol Police)
“And they walked through the midst of the fire, praising God and blessing the Lord.”
After spending a year in federal prison, Strand is scheduled to be released from the Federal Correctional Institution in Oakdale, Louisiana, one of three prisons that have been the site of his personal ordeal since July 25, 2023.
Gold said Strand was in solitary confinement for about four months during the year he was in custody and never wavered in his belief that going to trial was the right decision.
Strand said he resisted pressure to take a plea deal rather than succumb to charges he believes are unjust.
On September 27, 2022, a federal jury in the District of Columbia returned a guilty verdict against Strand on all five charges, including a 20-year felony obstruction charge.
Gold was scheduled to speak about medical freedom and COVID-19 at a permitted event on the Capitol grounds on Jan. 6. The event was canceled due to a large crowd that gathered at the Capitol following then-President Donald J. Trump’s speech at the Ellipse.
After entering the Capitol, Gold and Strand proceeded to Statuary Hall, where Gold was planning to give a speech on medical freedom. After police evacuated the crowd just before 3:00 PM, Gold and Strand moved to the Rotunda, where she stood on the podium at the statue of General Dwight D. Eisenhower and delivered her speech into a megaphone.
“The world needs heroes. We have heroes.”
Left-leaning publications such as Rolling Stone have mocked Strand’s decision to stand trial and celebrated her guilty verdict, calling her a “model-turned-COVID conspiracy theorist” and an “underwear model-turned-insurrectionist.”
“If this case teaches us anything, it’s that male models’ lives are priceless,” Rolling Stone wrote in September 2022. “Just because they have sculpted abs and great looks doesn’t mean they can’t go to prison, too.”
On June 1, 2023, Judge Cooper sentenced Strand to 32 months in prison and 36 months of probation and ordered him to pay $12,170 in restitution and fines.
Gold said he hopes Strand will return to public life after his release.
“I’m going to encourage John to run,” she said. “I think the world needs heroes. We have heroes. The world needs men to stand up. We need men to join the fight.”
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