The influencer, Jake Lang — who faced 11 charges in connection with the Jan. 6 insurrection — maintains the rally is to honor Austin Metcalf, a Frisco ISD teen who was fatally stabbed at a track meet earlier this month. The case has inflamed tensions in the community and online misinformation has spread online in its wake.
The protest planned for Saturday at Frisco’s Kuykendall Stadium is intended to “open up the dialogue” on “the epidemic of Black on White violence,” Lang said in an tweet promoting the event. Lang also called for Metcalf’s alleged killer, Karmelo Anthony, who’s Black, to be “put back in prison.” Anthony, 17, is currently out on a $250,000 bond.
Lang, a New York native, is running to fill Secretary of State Marco Rubio’s old U.S. Senate Seat in Florida. Although Lang was accused of battling with Capitol police for two hours and even swinging at them with a baseball bat, those charges were dropped before his trial when President Donald Trump issued a blanket pardon for every Capitol rioter.
In a Thursday Facebook post, Frisco police said they’re aware of Lang’s planned protest.
“Plans are being made accordingly, and Officers will be on-hand to ensure the safety of the public while allowing protestors to exercise their 1st Amendment rights,” the post said.
However, many who commented on the Facebook post, including Frisco resident Cathy Cook Garett, said they’re concerned about an outsider further inflaming tensions in their usually quiet, affluent suburb.“As a local, it is really bothersome that people from outside of our community are turning this into something that it isn’t,” Cook Garrett wrote. “It makes me so sad and fearful for the future of our country. I really wish people from outside of Frisco would stay out of the conversation and stop trying to make the case some sort of blatant propaganda … from BOTH sides!”
Fellow Frisco resident Debi Jenkins agreed.
“The person organizing this is from Florida,” Jenkins said. “Why are they coming here to stir up trouble?”
Lang has been a lightning rod for controversy since his arrest over the Jan. 6 charges.
During his time in jail, Lang attempted, but failed, to establish a right-wing militia, Rolling Stone reports, although the magazine noted that he still was able to raise more than $500,000 via an online fundraising platform for the “legal defense of Jan. 6 Patriots.” Rolling Stone further noted that “the monies raised through the site and by check go to Lang, personally.”
“I think Jake is a grifter who’s trying to appeal to the absolute lowest common denominator,” Professor Jon Lewis, a research fellow at the Program on Extremism at George Washington University, told Rolling Stone last year. “This is the guy who has somehow stayed relevant by claiming he’s like the OG political prisoner.”
Meanwhile, tensions continue to play out in Frisco over the death of Metcalf.
Witnesses say Anthony attacked Metcalf at the track meet after he told the other youth he was in the wrong seat. However, others claim Anthony acted in self-defense.
Anthony, who’s charged with first-degree murder, was released earlier this week after his family paid his bond, sparking heated and often hateful rhetoric on social media.
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This article appears in Apr 16-29, 2025.