Translation
She was at the Capitol on Jan. 6, 2021. She pleaded guilty. Now, she doesn’t want President Donald Trump’s pardon because she wants to own what she did.
January 22, 2025 at 4:20 p.m. EST Today at 4:20 p.m. EST
Pamela Hemphill, who served a federal prison sentence for her role in the Jan. 6, 2021, riot. (Matt Kelley/AP)
By Ben Brasch
A woman who once called herself the “MAGA Granny” has spent the past few years criticizing Donald Trump after she was sentenced to 60 days in prison for being part of the mob that stormed the U.S. Capitol on Jan. 6, 2021.
Now Pamela Hemphill from Boise, Idaho, will decline the pardon that Trump offered her and other Jan. 6 convicts during the first hours of his second term, she told The Washington Post.
“I don’t want to be a part of them trying to rewrite history. It was an insurrection that day,” Hemphill said Tuesday, the day after Trump issued the pardons.
Hemphill, 71, is giving up the chance to clear her name, and she said she will remain on federal probation for nine more months. She pleaded guilty, according to court documents, to violent entry or disorderly conduct on Capitol grounds. She said she served 60 days at a federal prison in California in 2022.
It is exceedingly rare for someone to reject a pardon, said Erica Zunkel, director of the Criminal and Juvenile Justice Clinic at the University of Chicago Law School.
“The reasons underlying what she did are truly of a different time and of a different political atmosphere, and really stands in stark contrast to how other people who got commutations and pardons for Jan. 6 stuff have very much leaned into ‘I did nothing wrong,’” Zunkel said.
Hemphill said she knows what she did was wrong. The evidence backs her up.
A week and a half after the riot, an FBI agent wrote in a court filing, a tipster sent a screenshot of a late December 2020 post from Hemphill that read: “It’s not going to be a FUN Trump Rally that is planned for January 6th, its a WAR!”
Another post showed the self-proclaimed “MAGA Granny” holding a large firearm, with a caption saying she was on her way to Washington for Jan. 6, when Trump scheduled a rally that coincided with Congress’s certification of the electoral college vote count confirming his election loss, the FBI agent wrote.
The FBI also said it found YouTube footage of Hemphill from a Jan. 5, 2021, event co-hosted by right-wing conspiracy theorist Alex Jones. In the video, the agent wrote, Hemphill can be heard saying she would try to get into the Capitol. “Keep an eye on me tomorrow,” she allegedly said.
That next day, Hemphill passed through barriers at the Capitol as other rioters pushed against them. An officer told her to go back. As she did, a prosecutor wrote in a court document, she encouraged others to break through: “You just gotta come in. … It’s your house. Come on in.”
At the Capitol steps, Hemphill was again at the front of the group when it reached the police barricades, the prosecutor wrote. She fell to her knees, and an officer helped her up.
She entered the Capitol at 3:01 p.m. through the East Rotunda doors, filming her progress along the way. The prosecutor wrote that Hemphill left nine minutes later, asking an officer to help her out, “claiming fear of injury from the crowd, and the officer escorted her out.”
Hemphill left the Capitol grounds only after other rioters told her that Trump had tweeted that they should go home. “When Trump says something, I listen,” Hemphill allegedly said.
That isn’t the case anymore.
Hemphill, who retired about 10 years ago after three decades as a drug and alcohol counselor, was a lifelong Republican — except when she voted for Barack Obama in 2008, citing how he would make history as America’s first Black president.
Hemphill said her family persuaded her to start supporting Trump. She noted that Trump wasn’t the first cult-of-personality figure she had fallen in with, saying she demonstrated with anti-government activist Ammon Bundy at the Idaho Capitol.
She said she was unnerved by Trump’s rhetoric in the “Access Hollywood” video, in which he bragged about sexually assaulting women. But, she said, her family told her that Trump would keep America from falling into a communist regime.
Hemphill said she didn’t watch the news, and she trusted her family.
“Trump was the father figure coming in to protect your children,” she recalled of her former thinking. “… He set himself up to become a savior.”
Hemphill said she found out about Trump’s pardon Monday while on air with CNN’s Abby Phillip.
When Phillip asked if she would take the pardon, Hemphill said she was still processing but added: “Oh, no, that would be an insult to our Capitol Police officers and the rule of law. I broke the law. I pleaded guilty because I was guilty.”
Hemphill said she then emailed her attorney Nathan I. Silver II, who confirmed she had received a pardon. She said her first response was, “What do I do to get off the pardon?”
She said Silver told her they would write a letter to the federal Office of the Pardon Attorney saying she was turning down the pardon. Silver declined to comment to The Post.
“Pardons themselves are fairly rare … given the size of the federal criminal justice system,” said Jacob Schuman, an associate professor at Temple University’s Beasley School of Law.
Schuman, who previously worked as a federal defense lawyer in Philadelphia, said he had never heard of anybody convicted of a crime turning down a pardon.
Hemphill has drawn widespread praise for her transparency and acceptance of responsibility for her role at the insurrection.
“When you’re alone by yourself, you know what’s right. I can’t allow somebody else to tell me what I think I should do,” she said.
A big factor, she said, was her therapist serving a hard truth: “You were not a victim, you were a volunteer.”
She said she didn’t want to go back to that therapist after hearing that — until she realized the therapist was correct.
Hemphill said she will continue her advocacy. She has done a slew of interviews speaking out against what happened four years ago.
“I can never make it right, but hopefully I can share enough of my story where people maybe will start thinking about it and get away from the MAGA cult. You never know, you just plant the seeds,” she said.
https://www.washingtonpost.com/nation/2 ... n6-pardon/
