A Georgia man who brought firearms to Washington and threatened former House speaker Nancy Pelosi (D-California) the day after the Jan. 6, 2021, attack on the U.S. Capitol was arrested again in recent days and accused of threatening federal judges, according to court documents.
Cleveland Grover Meredith Jr. — one of more than a thousand Jan. 6 defendants who received a pardon from President Donald Trump last year — allegedly wrote on Facebook in April “ALL J6 Federal JUDGES will be EXECUTED!”
The message was an apparent reference to the D.C. federal judges who oversaw the cases of the people who participated in the attack.
Meredith, who is in his 50s, was arrested on Monday, according to court records filed in the Northern District of Georgia. A public defender assigned to represent Meredith did not immediately return a request for comment.
Meredith is the latest Jan. 6 defendant accused of committing a crime since being pardoned. A December 2025 report from Citizens for Responsibility and Ethics, an advocacy group, found that at least a dozen Jan. 6 defendants have been charged with crimes since Trump pardoned them in January 2025. More faced criminal accusations in the year following the pardon, according to an update from the group.
The latest accusations against Meredith were laid out in an affidavit signed by an FBI agent. The court documents were first reported by the online news site Court Watch.
While much threatening language is protected by the First Amendment, federal officials contend Meredith’s alleged Facebook post constitutes what is known as a true threat, in part because he understood how such language would be received because he had previously been charged with threatening Pelosi.
Meredith’s “history of violent online rhetoric indicates that he knowingly sent the message on April 23, 2026, and did so for either: (i) the purpose of issuing a threat, (ii) with knowledge that his post would be viewed as a threat, or (iii) while consciously disregarding a substantial risk that his post would be viewed as a threat,” the affidavit reads.
Meredith, who was a devoted follower of the radical QAnon ideology, drove toward the nation’s capital from Colorado on Jan. 6, 2021, with a cache of guns, 2,500 rounds of ammunition and high-capacity magazines. On that drive, court records show, he repeatedly texted his family and friends ominous sentiments. One message said he was “gonna collect a … ton of Traitors heads.”
When a family member responded that Trump wanted him to go home, Meredith strongly disagreed and said: “he wants HEADS and I’m gonna deliver.” Meredith didn’t arrive in Washington until late that night, but the next day he informed his family that he was considering shooting Pelosi, twice texting that he was considering “putting a bullet in her noggin on live TV,” according to court documents.
He pleaded guilty to threatening to shoot Pelosi and was sentenced to 28 months in prison.
Cleveland was since the subject of a New Yorker profile that examined how, since being pardoned, he sought reparations from the “deep state” and his family.
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