Joseph “Joe” Randall Biggs, 38, is a father, a community leader, and a United States Army veteran with a distinguished military career. Joe is a retired staff sergeant and Purple Heart earner. He served in the United States Army for 8 years, which included year-long deployments to Iraq in 2005 and Afghanistan in 2008. During and following his military service, Joe built a reputation for his work as a first responder, in disaster relief, and initiative-based leadership.

Joe is a native North Carolinian with ties to South Carolina, Texas, and Florida. He comes from a proud family, one of soldiers, teachers, and journalists. Joe is soft-spoken, well read, and guided by his values of courage and personal accountability.
 

Joe has been in solitary confinement since April, and behind bars for almost 2 years, but his spirits are good. He has, at times, described being hungry at times, and moral support in the form of letters has been uncharacteristically low. His defense contributes to his commissary, and letters lift his spirits. To write him, see our contact page. 

It is thus a surprise to no one who knows Joe that his arrest in the Middle District of Florida on January 20, 2021, was a mutual effort between Joe and Daytona Beach-area FBI agents. These were the same agents with whom Joe had been meeting and speaking about Antifa since at least July 2020.

The government did not seek Joe’s detention on January 20, 2021. Magistrate Judge Embry Kidd sought home release instead, and ordered that Joe’s case be removed to Washington, D.C. From that day until April 22, 2021, Joe spoke daily with his Pretrial Service Officer in Orlando, who described in a March 29, 2021, report that Joe was “super-compliant” with the conditions of his January 20 release.

Following its superseding indictment against Joe on March 10, 2021—charging Joe with conspiracy, obstruction, destruction of property, among others—the government moved to revoke Joe’s pretrial release on March 20, 2021, on a pre-arrest finding of ‘future dangerousness.’ The court granted the government’s motions and on April 22, 2021, Joe reported to U.S. Marshals in Orlando and was transported to Seminole County Jail the same day.

Today and following yet a third superseding indictment charging seditious conspiracy, Joe remains incarcerated at the William G. Truesdale Adult Detention Center in Alexandria, Virginia.

The realities for both Joe’s continued confinement and his prospects of a fair and honest trial are grim.

More than 20 months have passed since January 6, 2021. Joe’s pretrial incarceration is nearing 18 consecutive months. The government has produced no discovery in the mountains of January 6 production over the past 18 months which demonstrates a plan or conspiracy. No “nuts and bolts” evidence of coordination exists. Not even a sliver.

Still, the government’s force against Joe is extraordinary. The resources being deployed know no bounds.

On the other end, Joe and his legal team need ordinary heroes; they need real money. Joe’s legal team has fought tirelessly to date without being paid. Indeed, the inconceivable burden of time and attention devoted and that continues to be devoted to Joe’s defense has been a pure volunteer effort. However, there are hard costs—tens of thousands of hours of raw video to combed, hardware, filings, experts, production, and beyond—that are a constant and accumulating brutal demand on Joe and his defense.

Joe’s legal team has seen to the continuation of Joe’s federal benefits while this matter is pending. The money that Joe’s family—most notably his young daughter— depends on is at least stable for the time being.
However, Joe’s lack of available resources combined with the meager hour or two per night he is authorized to review his case information puts his defense effort at a crisis-level deficit. Add that to the more than $25,000 that was fundraised on the back of Joe’s name only to be stolen by those claiming to be acting in his best interests.

This is a watershed moment in American history and jurisprudence. Joe is being prosecuted mercilessly not for leading an insurrection, but rather for his qualities as a leader. There is no denying Joe’s irrefutable error of entering and trespassing on the Capitol’s West Grounds on one of the rare days in its history when it is closed to the public. But that is a far cry from assault, from harm, from theft or damage, from wielding a weapon, and certainly from seditious conspiracy.

But just as there is no denying Joe’s error, there is no denying the dire consequences to the due process of law in the absence of you, the ordinary hero.

Sympathy is simply not enough.

Joe needs your backing. He needs it now.

 

Be a hero to an American hero.