January 6 rioter and West Virginia congressional candidate Derrick Evans (left), on stage with former Trump National Security Advisor Michael Flynn.Stephanie Mencimer/Mother Jones
During his visit to West Virginia Wednesday for a screening of his eponymous new movie, former Trump National Security Adviser Michael Flynn took some time to make a big plug for Derrick Evans, the January 6 rioter who pleaded guilty to a felony, served a three-month sentence, and now is running for Congress in West Virginia. During a Q&A after the show, Flynn explained how he decides whether to endorse political candidates seeking his support.
“My process going through people is probably 50 times more robust than what Donald Trump goes through,” he said. “I also look at what’s the character of this person. I want people of high moral character, people who are incorruptible, who are willing to lead our country forward against this tyrannical overreaching political establishment that we have.”
Flynn said Evans fits that bill. He’d included Evans in the Q&A lineup after the screening, which was probably smart given that the self-proclaimed political prisoner seems to have been responsible for generating a good chunk of the small crowd that assembled in an auditorium at West Virginia State University, outside of Charleston, for the event. During the pre-movie meet and greet, Evans happily pressed the flesh with fans as he campaigned to return to the building he stormed on January 6. (Evans had livestreamed his crime, yelling, “Derrick Evans is in the Capitol!” when he entered the building.)
The former West Virginia state legislator has been a very visible presence on right-wing media and in the community in one of this year’s weirder political races. His opponent in the GOP primary, incumbent Rep. Carol Miller, seems to be studiously ignoring him and barely campaigning. Evans’ campaign told me earlier that Miller has refused to debate him, and they don’t expect her to show up for a candidate forum scheduled for May 11, three days before Tuesday’s GOP primary. In a state where the Democratic Party has been badly decimated, the winner will likely be the next member of Congress.
Evans, who is barred from running for his old seat in the state legislature because of his felony conviction, is making his status as a veteran of January 6 the centerpiece of his congressional campaign, portraying himself as a true patriot and victim of the deep state. On the stage with Flynn, he drew parallels between his case and Flynn’s alleged persecution by the government, which is outlined in the film.
Flynn tells the story of, among other things, how the Justice Department went after the decorated military general as part of the investigation into Russian meddling in the 2016 presidential election. In 2017, he pleaded guilty to a single felony charge for lying to the FBI about his contact with Russia’s ambassador during the election. The Trump justice department later withdrew the charges against him, and then at the end of his term, Trump gave Flynn a pardon he claims he never wanted and no longer needed. In the film, Flynn compares himself to assassinated heroes of the 1960s like John F. Kennedy and Martin Luther King, who he claims were wiped out because they were challenging the establishment government. “I’m surprised they haven’t killed me,” he says.
Flynn’s triumph over the deep state has helped endear him to the MAGA faithful like Evans and his supporters, who see him as a victim of the same evil forces at work trying to bring down Trump. Moderator Boone Cutler, Flynn’s co-author of The Citizens Guide to Fifth Generation Warfare, asked Evans what about Flynn’s film had scared him. “What they did to [Flynn] is exactly what they did to myself and the other January 6 political prisoners,” he replied. “That’s exactly what they’re doing to President Trump. And that’s exactly what they’re going to do to you if they get the opportunity to do so.”
Here is WVA congressional candidate and January 6 rioter Derrick Evans with Michael Flynn last night, explaining how the government is spying on people who buy Bibles. pic.twitter.com/lz40v9oGY0
— Stephanie Mencimer (@smencimer) May 9, 2024
Evans’ pitch to the crowd, which included many people who said they didn’t live in West Virginia, also echoed some of Flynn’s paranoia. “We know that Congress has put out a report in January that any person who purchased a Bible, this government is spying on you and surveilling on you without a warrant,” he said, referring to a report from the House Subcommittee on the Weaponization of the Federal Government, chaired by Rep. Jim Jordan (R-Ohio) that found that federal investigators searched financial transaction data using terms like “Trump” and “MAGA” to help identify suspects from the January 6 riot. He criticized the “spineless jelly-backed RINOs in Congress” who recently voted to reauthorize the law allowing for warrantless surveillance. “This is absolutely unreal that this is happening. We need to get more patriots involved everything from city council all the way up through US Congress, US Senate. That’s where we’re gonna save this country.” The crowd cheered.
Does Flynn have enough juice to get Evans elected? West Virginia is about to find out. There is virtually no polling on the race. This year, the state also has two other big, highly contested US Senate and gubernatorial campaigns going on. These races have sucked the air out of this particular congressional competition. Local issues also have been dominating headlines, primarily the collapse of the state’s child welfare system, which was brutally exposed last month when the skeletal figure of a 14-year-old girl was found on the bathroom floor of her house. The dead girl hadn’t left home in four years after her mother had told the state she was homeschooling her. The horrific story has even forced Gov. Jim Justice to take time away from his campaign to replace retiring Sen. Joe Manchin (D) to respond. Child welfare hasn’t featured much in Evans’ campaign, or Miller’s, for that matter.
“The degree to which the Michael Flynn take is going to burst through what is a lot of attention on the senator and governor’s race and the catastrophic failure of our state agencies is anyone’s guess,” says Sam Workman, director of the Institute for Policy Research and Public Affairs at West Virginia University’s John D. “Jay” Rockefeller School of Policy & Politics. “It may matter a lot on Election Day, or it may matter not at all. National narratives do matter a lot more than they used to.”
He’s hesitant to make any predictions this year but suspects that the reason Miller’s campaign has been so quiet is that she doesn’t see Evans as much of a threat. But it’s also possible that the state’s MAGA voters could be highly motivated and turn out for Evans in large numbers. “Support for President Trump here is incredibly high. The degree to which that translates over to someone like Evans I think is anyone’s guess,” Workman says. “If you were forcing me to bet, I’d say it’s Miller’s race just because of how connected she is to the other major political players. But if we woke up on Wednesday and it was Evans in the general, it would not shock me.”
