Pardoned Jan. 6 rioter driven from Minneapolis rally by large counterprotest

A right-wing provocateur who was among the pardoned Jan. 6 rioters led a brief anti-immigration demonstration on a frigid Saturday in Minneapolis that ended in a crowd of counterprotesters throwing punches at him as he tried to leave.

A crowd of demonstrators had already gathered outside the Diana E. Murphy federal courthouse downtown by the time Jake Lang and a group of about 10 right-wing protesters arrived at noon. The crowd opposing Lang grew to several hundred and stretched along both sides of South Fourth Street between the courthouse and City Hall.

Lang, who was pardoned along with roughly 1,600 others on the first day of President Donald Trump's second term, announced the Minneapolis protest at a time of heightened tension after the administration dispatched thousands of immigration enforcement agents to the city.