Riot Revis­it­ed: Jan. 6 defen­dants recount ‘Orwellian’ treat­ment

Jan. 6 riot defen­dant Daniel Good­wyn remem­bers what it felt like when a fed­er­al judge ordered his com­put­er to be mon­i­tored by the gov­ern­ment for alleged dis­in­for­ma­tion as part of his sen­tence for enter­ing and remain­ing in the Capi­tol that day three years ago.
“It feels Orwellian,” Good­wyn, a 35-year-old from Corinth, Texas, told the Wash­ing­ton Exam­in­er when asked about the com­put­er mon­i­tor­ing pro­gram put in place by U.S. Dis­trict Judge Reg­gie Wal­ton. Good­wyn said he was at the Capi­tol on Jan. 6, 2021, as a cit­i­zen jour­nal­ist for an inde­pen­dent web­site known as StopHate.com. He entered the build­ing via the Sen­ate wing door at 3:32 p.m. and went inside the Capi­tol for “a cou­ple of min­utes,” accord­ing to his crim­i­nal affi­davit.
For those few min­utes, Good­wyn would spend weeks behind bars and pay thou­sands o …