Jan. 6 Participant, Former FCI Dublin Inmate, Rejects Pardon: Reports

DUBLIN, CA — An Idaho grandmother in her 70s who pleaded guilty to participating in the January 6 riots on the Capitol said that she will refuse a pardon from President Donald Trump.

On his first day in office, Trump pardoned or commuted the sentences of nearly 1,600 people involved in the insurrection. But Pamela Hemphill, who spent 60 days at the Federal Correctional Institute in Dublin in 2022, said she’s not interested.

RELATED: 110 Jan. 6 Defendants From CA Pardoned In Trump’s First Official Act

"I will not accept a pardon because that would be an insult to the Capitol Police officers, to the rule of law and to the nation,” Hemphill, a former Trump supporter who has soured on the president and his movement, said in a video posted to X.

"Taking a pardon would be taking a part of what January 6 has been trying to do [which] is rewrite history," she told Newsweek. "[To say] that [the Capitol riot] was a peaceful protest and the DOJ was weaponized against them. And I'm not going to play a part of that. It's not true."

“I pleaded guilty because I was guilty, and accepting a pardon also would serve to contribute to their gaslighting and false narrative,” Hemphill told the BBC.

Hemphill took part in a “Stop the Steal” rally on Jan. 6, 2021, and told KTVB that she directed others in the crowd to illegally enter the Capitol. She got swept up in the moment - figuratively and literally.

"When I got to the steps, they knocked me down, stepped on my head, pulled out my shoulder, broke my glasses, I was not breathing," Hemphill told KTVB. "If it wasn't for the Capitol Police Officers, I wouldn't be here 'cause I couldn't breathe. They pulled me up and put me behind them."

She was identified by law enforcement, and took a shortened sentence as part of a plea deal. When she went to prison in May 2022, she had cancer, and became sympathetically known on the internet as “MAGA Granny,” a wrongfully incarcerated grandma with cancer. However, she denied that label in many interviews, and has since turned on the movement she once embraced.
Hemphill told KTVB that the Stop the Steal movement, the incorrect idea that the 2020 election was “stolen” from Trump, is based on lies. In August, she announced she planned to vote for Kamala Harris.

"Trump is a dangerous, and I mean a dangerous narcissist. He needs to be put in prison," Hemphill told Newsweek. "In my opinion, he has committed crimes and needs to be held accountable. He's not above the law."

Hemphill told KTVB that she has lost friends and received online harassment and death threats due to her new positions, but feels she’s done “the best that I can to let others know that whatever happened that day was wrong."

In a flurry of executive actions Monday, Trump pardoned over 1500 people, including former Proud Boys leader Enrique Tarrio, who was sentenced to 22 years in prison — the longest term of imprisonment among all of those charged with the Jan. 6 attack — on a conviction of seditious conspiracy. He also pardoned Stewart Rhodes, the former leader of the Oath Keepers militia, who had received the second-longest sentence — 18 years — on his seditious conspiracy conviction.
Trump also ordered the attorney general to seek the dismissal of roughly 450 cases that are pending before judges stemming from the largest investigation in Justice Department history.

Trump has claimed they were unfairly treated by the Justice Department, which also charged him with federal crimes in two cases he contends were politically motivated. Trump said the pardons will end “a grave national injustice that has been perpetrated upon the American people over the last four years” and begin “a process of national reconciliation.”

The pardons were met with elation from Trump supporters and lawyers for the Jan. 6 defendants. Trump supporters gathered late Monday in the cold outside the Washington jail, where more than a dozen defendants were being held before the pardons.

“We are deeply thankful for President Trump for his actions today,” said James Lee Bright, an attorney who represented Rhodes.

“This marks a pivotal moment in our client’s life, and it symbolizes a turning point for our nation,” Tarrio attorney Nayib Hassan said in a statement. “We are optimistic for the future, as we now turn the page on this chapter, embracing new possibilities and opportunities.””

Democrats slammed the move to extend the pardons to violent rioters, many of whose crimes were captured on camera and broadcast on live TV.

Former House Speaker Nancy Pelosi called it “an outrageous insult to our justice system and the heroes who suffered physical scars and emotional trauma as they protected the Capitol, the Congress and the Constitution.”

“Donald Trump is ushering in a Golden Age for people that break the law and attempt to overthrow the government," Senate Democratic Leader Chuck Schumer said in an emailed statement.

Former Metropolitan Police Officer Michael Fanone, who lost consciousness and suffered a heart attack after a rioter shocked him with a stun gun, appeared taken aback to learn from an Associated Press reporter that those who assaulted police officers are among the pardon recipients.

“This is what the American people voted for,” he said. “How do you react to something like that?”
Fanone said he has spent the past four years worried about his safety and the well-being of his family. Pardoning his assailants only compounds his fears, he said.

“I think they’re cowards,” he said. “Their strength was in their numbers and the mob mentality. And as individuals, they are who they are.”

— Michael Wittner, Rachel Barnes, and The Associated Press contributed to this report.