One of the Faces of Jan. 6

The photograph was an immediate symbol of Jan.6, 2021: a man in bluejeans and a thick plaid overshirt reclining in the chambers of then-Speaker Nancy Pelosi, with a smile on his face and his boot resting atop a black spiral notebook on a corner of a desk.The smirk and the lug-soled boot belonged to Richard Barnett, a 64-year-old former window salesman from Gravette, Ark., who goes by Bigo.

He used his time in the office to pocket an envelope with the speaker’s letterhead and scrawl a crude note to Pelosi herself.But it was the photo of him that really lasted, maybe because of the way it mixed vandalism with the threat of violence — he had a stun device on him — and encapsulated the rioters’ mockery of the country’s democratic institutions.Washington looked nothing like that on Monday, as lawmakers in a quiet and snow-covered Capitol certified President-elect Donald Trump’s November victory.

The Bigos of the world have no complaints about this election.But the tale of his last four years — in which he was convicted and sentenced and seemingly tried to trade on his fame — is just as revealing as that first picture.

He spent today in a low-security federal prison in Seagoville, Texas, a place where inmates aren’t allowed to have internet access but from which he manages to transmit his thoughts on social media all the same.These days, he’s a hero on the right whose fortunes may well be tied to those of a president-elect who has promised to pardon people like him.What happens when you put your boot on a desk in the speaker’s office?“For better or worse you have become one of the faces of Jan.

6,” Judge Christopher Cooper told him last year, “and I think you enjoy it.”‘Bigo was here’Over the past four years, almost 1,600 people have been prosecuted in connection with the riot at the Capitol, including Trump himself, and hundreds of those convicted have already returned to their previous lives.My colleague Alan Feuer, who covers fede...