A man pardoned by Donald Trump for participating in January 6 attack on the US Capitol and threatening to kill the then house speaker, Nancy Pelosi, is facing new charges for threatening to kill federal judges that presided over his and other cases arising from the violent anti-government clash.
Cleveland Meredith, from North Carolina, was arrested on Monday over a Facebook post in April that allegedly read: “ALL J6 Federal JUDGES will be EXECUTED!”
Then last month, according to the government, Meredith posted “several threatening and concerning messages calling for violence following the midterm elections”, including: “Make damn sure you’re on the right team going into the midterms/… firing squads will commence 11/04/26.”
Another post, noted in the complaint, reads: “The midterms will be an absolute MASSACRE.”
Federal prosecutors in the Georgia, from where the messages was sent, said in the complaint that the message “expressly threatened execution” and “constituted a true threat under the circumstances”.
“Meredith’s history of violent online rhetoric indicates that he knowingly sent the message on April 23, 2026,” the complaint said, alleging that he did so for “the purpose of issuing a threat, with knowledge that his post would be viewed as a threat, or while consciously disregarding a substantial risk that his post would be viewed as a threat”.
In December 2021, Meredith was sentenced to 28 months after pleading guilty to a charge involving a threat he made to shoot Pelosi.
Prosecutors said Meredith had traveled from Colorado to Washington DC on 6 January 2021, but arrived late because of car trouble, missing the confrontation at the US Capitol.
Several days before the riot, Meredith posted his strategy for the insurrection action: “Allow your enemy to be boastful, to think he has won. Present yourself as weak, disorganized. Then eradicate.” That was followed by another Facebook post that read: “We’re gonna surround DC and slowly constrict.”
Then, on 6 January, he wrote: “War time” and “I’m gonna collect a shit ton of Traitors heads.”
The following day he sent a text message to one of his relatives that included a threat directed toward Pelosi. The relative contacted Meredith’s mother, an interior designer whose work has appeared in Southern Living magazine, who then contacted the FBI.
Meredith was then tracked to a hotel near the Capitol. The FBI found a 9mm semi-automatic firearm, an assault-style rifle with a telescopic sight, approximately 2,500 rounds of ammunition and large-capacity magazines inside his trailer.
On his first day back in office in 2025, Trump pardoned Meredith as part of a mass executive clemency order covering nearly 1,600 individuals charged or convicted of seditious conspiracy over their participation in the assault.
Prosecutors said Meredith’s April Facebook post was part of a campaign.
“The Defendant has been threatening and harassing individuals and institutions online for at least the last sixteen months,” they said in a motion to hold Meredith in detention.
He had been referred to the FBI in July 2025 for making a threat to an unnamed individual, prosecutors said, and was interviewed by the bureau. Meredith “acknowledged making them but denied they were threatening in nature”, according to the government.
Meredith is one of a number of Trump’s J6 defendants who received pardons and have, or allegedly have, reoffended.
Before the January 6 riot, Meredith had run Car Nutz, an Atlanta-area car-wash business. The business attracted controversy in 2018 when it sponsored a billboard linking itself to QAnon.
Asked why he had linked his car-wash business to the conspiracy theory umbrella, Meredith told the Atlanta Journal-Constitution: “We all support freedom and independent thought.”
