Three innocent-looking solvent drip containers. A federal conviction. And a man caught in the crossfire of a legal nightmare that could turn thousands of law-abiding Americans into felons overnight.
Meet Hatchet Speed—a Virginia software developer who now holds a bizarre set of records among the January 6 defendants. He is the only person forced through three separate trials. He remains the only J6er whose presidential pardon has never touched his clearly related case outside Washington, D.C.
The Fourth Circuit Court of Appeals just dropped a bombshell: it upheld Speed's conviction for "possessing firearm silencers"—even though those silencers were actually unmodified gun-cleaning accessories, still sitting in their original boxes with labels screaming "solvent trap."
Here's where logic takes a nosedive. For years, Americans have bought these threaded containers to catch cleaning fluids. Yes, with a drill and some ingenuity, they *could* be converted into silencers—but that's like calling a metal pipe a "machine gun" because it could be turned into one.
In November 2023, the Biden administration's BATFE issued an ambiguous "open letter," redefining many solvent traps as silencers overnight. Suddenly, every owner of such a device faces up to five years in federal prison unless they registered it—something few knew they had to do.
Speed's case began with an FBI agent who wormed into his life, posing as a fellow patriot. The agent secretly recorded Speed's casual chatter about end-times and hypothetical conflicts. He prodded Speed with leading questions about converting solvent traps *if* society collapsed. The trial judge ruled these musings proved intent.
When federal agents raided Speed's Virginia property in 2022, they found three solvent traps in a storage unit—still boxed, labeled as cleaning accessories. Yet prosecutors charged him in two districts: a misdemeanor for the Capitol breach and a bogus "silencer" case.
The first Virginia jury couldn't agree—hung. Instead of dropping the case, prosecutors added a felony obstruction charge, later gutted by the Supreme Court in 2024. A second trial convicted Speed on the (non)silencers. A D.C. trial convicted him for J6. Sentence: seven years—four for the obstruction, three for the farcical silencer possession.
On the night of Trump's J6 pardons, Bureau of Prisons released Speed. But then came a gut punch: probation officers told him his three-year silencer sentence had been converted into three years of supervised release—without any court hearing.
Meanwhile, other J6ers saw their related gun and drug charges vanish under the same pardon. Dan Wilson's felon-in-possession case? Dismissed. Elias Costianes' ammunition charge? Gone. Jeremy Brown's grenade and classified document case? Covered. Daniel Ball, Benjamin Martin, Peter Krill, Guy Reffitt—all pardoned for similar offenses.
Speed's lawyer, Roger Roots, admits they gambled on winning the silencer case on its merits. "Hatchet is plainly innocent of these charges," Roots says. "Maybe not pushing the pardon was a mistake."
Now the Fourth Circuit's ruling means thousands of Americans unknowingly own what the court just deemed illegal silencers. Those solvent traps sitting in drawers, on shelves, in garages? Under this ruling, every single one could land its owner in prison.
Speed plans to ask the entire Fourth Circuit to rehear the case. If denied, he'll take it to the Supreme Court. Until then, he remains a convicted felon—and the Second Amendment just took another hit in the Fourth Circuit's jurisdiction.
This isn't just about one man. It's about whether common sense still has a place in federal courtrooms—or whether a gun-cleaning tool, untouched and unmodified, can send you to prison for years.
