An Atlantic City DJ stormed the Capitol hoping to go viral. Now, he’s going to prison instead.
“I got what I wanted,” James Douglas Rahm III later told members of the U.S House committee that probed the events of Jan. 6. “But at what cost?”
A New Jersey DJ who told authorities he joined the rioters who stormed the U.S. Capitol building on Jan. 6, 2021, hoping to produce a viral video of the insurrection was sentenced Thursday to 45 days behind bars.
The footage filmed that day by James Douglas “J.D.” Rahm III has since been used in congressional investigations and by the FBI to charge others who participated in the attack.
“I got what I wanted,” Rahm later told members of the House committee that probed the events of Jan. 6. “But at what cost?”
At a sentencing hearing Thursday in Washington, Rahm, 29, of Atlantic City, maintained that he was not a particularly avid supporter of former President Donald Trump and that it was only his desire to capture an “historic event” that led him to the Capitol that day.
His lawyer, H. Heather Shaner, insisted that Rahm’s subsequent cooperation with Congress and federal authorities should be enough to keep him out of jail on the misdemeanor count of disorderly conduct on restricted grounds to which he pleaded guilty last year.
But U.S. District Judge Christopher R. Cooper disagreed, spurred by prosecutors who noted that Rahm had repeatedly ignored warning signs — ranging from shattered windows and blaring alarms and numerous tussles between police and the intruders — that should have signaled that he was not allowed in the building.
At one point, Assistant U.S. Attorney Douglas Collyer noted, Rahm’s own footage appears to show him lighting up a joint in the Capitol Rotunda.
“Oh my f— God,” he shouted over the recording amid the chaos unfolding around him. “We just stormed the Capitol.”
Thursday’s sentence makes Rahm the 28th New Jersey defendant to be sentenced for participating in the riot, which caused millions in damage, injured scores of officers and threatened the peaceful transition of presidential power.
Among them is his father — James Douglas Rahm Jr., 64, of Philadelphia and Atlantic City — who accompanied his son to the Capitol that day and later boasted on social media that he should have relieved himself on former House Speaker Nancy Pelosi’s chair.
The elder Rahm was sentenced to 12 months incarceration last year. A federal judge has since allowed him to delay his prison stint while he appeals his conviction.
His son, in a letter sent to Cooper in advance of his sentencing Thursday, said that while he voted for Trump in the 2020 election he did so only because his parents were avid supporters.
He maintained he had no plans to head to Washington on Jan. 6 until his dad announced he was going.
“I was driven by a sense of responsibility towards my father’s safety, since he was going alone and not in perfect health,” Rahm III wrote. “I was also intrigued by the opportunity to document a historic gathering.”
After attending Trump’s rally on the Ellipse together on the morning of Jan. 6, the Rahms later separated as they joined the large crowd marching toward the Capitol building, where members of Congress were convening to certify President Joe Biden’s victory.
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But as the younger Rahm pressed forward, filming the action with a GoPro camera he’d recently purchased, signs of trouble abounded.
Near the scaffolding erected on the northwest side of the Capitol for Biden’s upcoming inauguration, he filmed visibly injured officers. But he continued to climb the steps.
Reaching the Upper West Terrace, he panned over the crowd where numerous rioters brawled with police.
He pressed onward through the Senate Wing Doors, filming shattered glass on the ground and intruders singing the national anthem over blaring alarms.
And he wandered into the office suite of former House Speaker Nancy Pelosi — where staffers had locked themselves in an office, cowering behind furniture — only to capture another rioter on video shouting: “Let’s get those dirty politicians!”
At one point, prosecutors said, Rahm joined a crowd that shoved aside officers who were struggling to keep the Capitol’s East Rotunda doors sealed to keep the hordes outside at bay.
Unbeknownst to him until weeks later, his father was on the other side of the door and made his way into the building once the mob inside managed to fling the doors open.
All told, prosecutors said, Rahm spent roughly an hour in the Capitol building before leaving, reuniting with his father, and making his way back to Philadelphia.
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When FBI agents tracked him down a month later, he immediately confessed and agreed to cooperate. But he told the judge Thursday he’d suffered significantly since.
His DJ business has fallen off, he said, noting that he’d been banned from all major social media platforms due to the publicity around his arrest.
He also complained that he now routinely gets stopped for extra security screening at airports and that his account on Airbnb has been suspended, making it difficult for him to travel.
And yet, Rahm added, he hoped he’d done enough to make amends.
“My participation had enormous consequences for America, for which I grieve,” he told the judge. “But I hope my actions since that day, in some small way, can help to heal our country.”