Where Are They Now? Jay Johnston
No, really. Where is the comedic actor implicated in the Jan. 6, 2021, mob assault on the U.S. Capitol Police?
In the wake of the mob assault on the U.S. Capitol on Jan. 6, 2021, by a variety of participants — many of whom marched straight from a “Stop The Steal” rally held by and featuring then-President Donald J. Trump alongside his loyalists and current Republican Congressional representatives — the FBI has posted photos (and some videos) of 464 individuals sought for “Capitol Violence.”
Hundreds have been arrested or indicted since then, and some of the most visible participants who stormed the Capitol, including the infamous QAnon Shaman, already have pleaded guilty.
At least one case remains mysteriously in limbo.
As soon as the FBI Tweeted out photos on March 4 of individual labeled #247, many folks immediately knew who that was. Jay Johnston.
But here we are, on Sept. 9, and Johnston’s photos have not updated with a big red ARRESTED tag, nor has he shown up on the Department of Justice’s U.S. Attorney’s Office list of “Capitol Breach Cases” as having a case filed in court against him.
What’s the holdup on his holdup?
Nobody seems to know.
I made a note of the connection back in March on The Comic’s Comic.
In April, multiple sources who knew or used to know Johnston better told me that his father was negotiating Jay’s surrender to authorities.
In May, Kathy Griffin posted this Tweet reply about Johnston’s involvement:
Sedition Track @seditiontrack
@ryanjreilly @emptywheel Speaking of big ears ... https://t.co/UMrDt2ZkoBI reached out to the FBI and DOJ then, and also this week. They declined comment. More officially, the U.S. Attorney’s Office for the District of Columbia told me: “We are not commenting on cases or the investigation beyond what has been submitted or stated to the Court.”
Whether he remains a fugitive or not, Johnston, 52, has still gotten his voice heard this year.
He continued to voice characters on two different animated sitcoms: As Jimmy Pesto, business rival on FOX’s Bob’s Burgers; and as Stanley Goodman on Adult Swim’s Momma Named Me Sheriff. Here’s a clip of Johnston as Jimmy Pesto visiting the burger joint to express pride in Bob (H. Jon Benjamin), which originally aired this February.
During FOX’s summer press presentation for the TV Critics Association, FOX Entertainment President Michael Thorn spoke glowingly about all of his network’s continued “Animation Domination,” including Bob’s Burgers. I guess nobody asked about whether Johnston’s character would return this fall?
Born and raised in Chicago, Johnston got his comedy start at Columbia College Chicago, the Annoyance Theater and with Second City, where he’d link up with the other funny folks who made HBO’s Mr. Show with Bob and David from 1995-1998. He followed that up with a role as a police officer on Comedy Central’s The Sarah Silverman Program.
So perhaps it’s not completely accidental that in those years, before Gavin McInnes left Vice and founded The Proud Boys, when McInnes was partying with Cross and getting both Cross and Silverman to contribute to Vice, that Johnston might also become a friend and cohort of McInnes. Multiple videos of Johnston and McInnes joking around from 2007 continue to exist on a separate site since YouTube deplatformed McInnes.
In a 2007 interview with Ben Kharakh, Johnston revealed that he’d gotten kicked out of school in Chicago, and his parents moved with him out to the suburbs and sent him to private school, which also expelled him? He mentioned in that interview that his father was a lawyer; his mother, an English teacher.
Kharakh wondered if Johnston’s own schooling informed his work on Adult Swim’s Moral Orel. Not exactly.
Johnston said then: “I did go to a junior year of high school at a parochial school and that place was a nightmare, man. I didn’t know shit about religion and I still don’t, but the fact of the matter was I only barely got through a year there before I was kicked out. I got in a lot of trouble.”
What happened?
Johnston, again: “I had just moved to the suburbs after being kicked out of school in Chicago, so I did not know the area at all. I’m out there at this parochial joint and we’re having this bonfire and the cops start coming through the woods. The woods get lit up, and we all scatter.” He said he’d gotten kicked out of Chicago schools for drug possession. He also copped to getting into “trouble keeping my mouth shut sometimes.” He said: “I don’t think I was a huge asshole, I just liked to fuck around and have fun. Which still haunts me to this day.”
In 2015, when The Gavin McInnes Show aired on Anthony Cumia’s Compound Media, Johnston once again found himself joking around with McInnes, just a year before McInnes launched The Proud Boys.
Johnston’s comedy friends confide that Johnston’s private political views also tended to skew farther and farther hard-right in recent years.
Proud Boys and Three Percenters were among the more organized and militarized factions at the Jan. 6 march on the Capitol. While some of those wanted for assault against federal law enforcement officials have been arrested, indicted or pleaded guilty to their charges, Johnston remains at large.
The Federal Bureau of Investigation still seeks help identifying and apprehending many of them.
The FBI is seeking the public’s assistance in identifying individuals who made unlawful entry into the U.S. Capitol building and committed various other alleged criminal violations, such as destruction of property, assaulting law enforcement personnel, targeting members of the media for assault, and other unlawful conduct, on January 6, 2021, in Washington, D.C.
We have deployed our full investigative resources and are working closely with our federal, state, and local partners to aggressively pursue those involved in these criminal activities.
If you have witnessed unlawful violent action—or have any information about the cases below—we urge you to contact us.
You can call 1-800-CALL-FBI (1-800-225-5324) to verbally report tips and/or information related to this investigation, or submit at tip online at tips.fbi.gov.
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