Trump pardoned Meredith in 2025 after his 2021 conviction for threatening Pelosi

Cleveland Meredith, a North Carolina man pardoned by Donald Trump for his participation in the January 6 attack on the U.S. Capitol, was arrested Monday on federal charges alleging he threatened to kill federal judges who presided over his case and other cases arising from the attack. A complaint in Georgia cites an April Facebook post that allegedly read, “ALL J6 Federal JUDGES will be EXECUTED!”

Federal prosecutors also cited messages Meredith posted last month, including: “Make damn sure you’re on the right team going into the midterms/… firing squads will commence 11/04/26.” Another post quoted in the complaint read: “The midterms will be an absolute MASSACRE.” Prosecutors said the messages were sent from Georgia and said the April post “expressly threatened execution” and “constituted a true threat under the circumstances.”

The complaint alleged that Meredith knowingly sent the April 23, 2026 post for the purpose of issuing a threat, either with knowledge that it would be viewed as a threat or while consciously disregarding a substantial risk that it would be. Prosecutors cited his “history of violent online rhetoric” as evidence.

Prosecutors said the April post formed part of a campaign. In a motion to hold Meredith in detention, they wrote: “The Defendant has been threatening and harassing individuals and institutions online for at least the last sixteen months.” Meredith had been referred to the FBI in July 2025 for making a threat to an unnamed individual, prosecutors said, and the bureau interviewed him. According to the government, Meredith acknowledged making the threat but denied that it was threatening in nature.

Meredith had pleaded guilty in December 2021 to a charge involving a threat to shoot Pelosi and was sentenced to 28 months. On Donald Trump’s first day back in office in 2025, Trump pardoned Meredith under a mass executive clemency order covering nearly 1,600 people charged or convicted of seditious conspiracy over participation in the assault.

Before January 6, Meredith ran Car Nutz, an Atlanta-area car-wash business. In 2018, the business attracted controversy after it sponsored a billboard linking itself to QAnon. Asked why he had connected the company to the conspiracy theory umbrella, Meredith told the Atlanta Journal-Constitution: “We all support freedom and independent thought.”

Prosecutors said Meredith traveled from Colorado to Washington, D.C., on January 6, 2021, but arrived late because of car trouble and missed the confrontation at the Capitol.

Several days before the riot, Meredith posted a strategy: “Allow your enemy to be boastful, to think he has won. Present yourself as weak, disorganized. Then eradicate.” A later Facebook post said, “We’re gonna surround DC and slowly constrict.”

On January 6, he wrote, “War time” and “I’m gonna collect a shit ton of Traitors heads.” The following day, Meredith sent a relative a text message that included a threat directed toward Pelosi. The relative contacted Meredith’s mother, an interior designer whose work had appeared in Southern Living, and she contacted the FBI.

The FBI tracked Meredith to a hotel near the Capitol and 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.

Meredith is among a number of defendants pardoned by Trump who have, or allegedly have, reoffended, according to The Guardian.