A self-proclaimed “former liberal,” Straka founded Walk Away, a campaign encouraging people to leave the Democratic Party for the Republican Party, and he became an early organizer with the so-called Stop the Steal campaign. This fall, he pleaded guilty to federal prosecutors’ charge that he engaged in disorderly and disruptive conduct on the U.S. Capitol grounds on Jan. 6 and that he “did so with the intent to impeded, disrupt, or disrupt” a session of Congress—in this case, to disrupt the congressional certification of Joe Biden’s victory in the presidential election.
Straka spoke to Levin on the Feb. 1 episode of “The Mark Levin Show,” presenting what he said was his first time publicly sharing his story of what happened that day. He claimed he now suffers from “PTSD” caused by his arrest and detainment and bristled at being treated like an “insurrectionist.”
Straka was an early organizer with the so-called Stop the Steal campaign. The day following the campaign’s first rally in Washington, D.C., on Nov. 14, Straka held a Walk Away rally in the city featuring Stop the Steal leader Ali Alexander and Drew Hernandez, the latter of whom spoke of “civil war” and celebrated the violence of the Proud Boys hate group.
On Jan. 5, Straka joined far-right operatives and conspiracy theorists like Ali Alexander and Alex Jones at a Stop the Steal rally where Christian nationalist sentiment and threats of violence were ubiquitous. Straka told Levin his speech that evening was “very fiery, which I thought at the time was still legally permitted in the United States.”