Far-right political activist and agitator Edward Jacob Lang, who goes by the name Jake Lang, was chased off from outside the Peacock Theater in Los Angeles on Sunday (June 28) after he showed up with racist signs protesting the 2026 BET Awards.
Lang, who served four years in prison for his involvement in the 2021 January 6 Capitol riots until he was pardoned by President Donald Trump last year, showed up outside the BET Awards with a variety of racist signs, as reported by TMZ. Joined by a small group of other protesters, Lang led a group that held up signs featuring racist rhetoric such as “Black parents are failures.”
He was seen wearing a bulletproof vest that featured a Confederate flag on it, and also wore a hat that had the Iron Cross design, which is a hate symbol utilized by the Nazi Party of Germany during World War II. In posts referring to the incident, Lang claimed he was “nearly MURDERED by a violent BLACK MOB,” failing to mention he incited the behavior.
Footage of the incident shows that Lang and his crew were scared off after multiple people kicked, tore away their signs, and threw bottles at them.
At one point, a counterprotester placed a traffic cone over Lang’s head.
Lang, who is also a Republican candidate in the 2026 U.S. Senate special election in Florida, has a history of legal issues beyond his arrest for his involvement in the January 6, 2021 attack on the U.S. Capitol. Lang was found guilty of assault charges, including attacking multiple officers with a baseball bat, but he was later pardoned alongside thousands of others during the first week of Trump’s second presidency.
Lang has been arrested multiple times since he was pardoned, including for a misdemeanor for threatening a police officer, damaging property in Minnesota after defacing an anti-ICE sculpture, disrupting the court proceedings of Chud the Builder, and making terroristic threats after he threatened to murder Karmelo Anthony, who was arrested for the murder of Austin Metcalf.
