(WASHINGTON) — Jan. 6 rioters convicted for role in Capitol attack speak out against Trump’s pardons
On his first day back in office, President Donald Trump followed through on his pledge to pardon those convicted for participating in the Jan. 6 attack on the U.S. Capitol, granting a sweeping unconditional pardon to more than 1,500 rioters and commutations for more than a dozen others.
Following the executive action, two people who pleaded guilty for their actions at the Capitol that day have spoken out against their pardons.
“This is a sad day,” Idaho resident Pamela Hemphill told Boise ABC affiliate KIVI. “The ramifications of this is going to be horrifying.”
Hemphill pleaded guilty to violent entry and disorderly conduct on Capitol grounds and was sentenced in May 2022 to 60 days of incarceration. She told KIVI she doesn’t want to be pardoned.
“I broke the law. I pleaded guilty because I was guilty,” she told KIVI. “And we know all of them are guilty.”
New Hampshire resident Jason Riddle, who admitted to entering the Capitol on Jan. 6, drinking from an open bottle of wine and stealing a book from the Senate Parliamentarian office, pleaded guilty to theft of government property and illegally protesting inside the Capitol. He was sentenced in April 2022 to 90 days in prison.
Riddle was struggling with alcohol at the time, and part of his probation included mandatory alcoholic treatment. The Navy veteran said he is grateful for his arrest.
“I am guilty of the crimes I have committed and accept the consequences,” he told ABC News. “It is thanks to those consequences I now have a happy and fruitful existence.”
At the time of his arrest, Riddle said he was an “obsessor” of Trump’s.
“I don’t need to obsess over a narcissistic bully to feel better about myself,” Riddle said. “Trump can shove his pardon up his a–.”
As of early January, more than 1,580 individuals had been charged criminally in federal court in connection with Jan. 6, with over 1,000 pleading guilty, according to the Department of Justice.
Of course, not all of those convicted for their role in the Jan. 6 attack questioned Trump’s executive action. Stewart Rhodes, the head of the Oath Keepers, is among the 14 people whose sentences were commuted by Trump. He was serving an 18-year sentence after being convicted of seditious conspiracy for leading members of the Oath Keepers in an attempt to use the violent Capitol attack to stop the peaceful transfer of power.
“That was a bunch of nonsense,” Rhodes told ABC News while standing at a protest outside the DC Central Detention Facility after being released on Tuesday.
Rhodes, who was not at the Capitol on Jan. 6, said he isn’t disappointed that he didn’t receive a full pardon, and believes Trump will ultimately issue him one.
Asked whether the Jan. 6 defendants who were charged with assaulting police officers deserved a pardon, he said yes.
“Like I said before, it’s about defense of innocence. Because they were not given a fair trial,” Rhodes said.
Riddle, though, worried about the message the executive action sends to those convicted of assaulting police officers.
“If I was one of the people who crossed the line into assaulting police officers that day, I’d probably believe I can get away with anything I want now,” he said.
Asked during a press briefing Tuesday about pardoning violent Jan. 6 convicts, including one who admitted to attacking an officer, Trump said he would look into it and repeated his claim that the rioters were unjustly prosecuted.
“The cases that we looked at, these were people that actually love our country, so we thought a pardon would be appropriate,” he said.
ABC News’ Jay O’Brien contributed to this report.
Copyright © 2025, ABC Audio. All rights reserved.
