Another convicted January 6 US Capitol attacker rejects Trump’s pardon
Another convicted January 6 US Capitol attacker rejects Trump’s pardon
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Jason Riddle says he rejected pardon because ‘it happened. I did those things, and they weren’t pardonable’. At least one more person who was convicted in connection with the 2021 US Capitol attack carried out by Donald Trump supporters has rejected a pardon from the president, saying he believed his actions “weren’t pardonable”.
![[A man in a red knit cap with the word “Trump” in white holds a wine bottle in the US Capitol on the day of the attack there on 6 January 2021.]](https://i.guim.co.uk/img/media/5fec7ea559d2c67bb682a2c3f1f47067026b411a/8_0_757_946/master/757.jpg?width=445&dpr=1&s=none&crop=none)
In an interview published Friday by New Hampshire Public Radio (NHPR), US navy veteran Jason Riddle said: “It’s almost like [Trump] was trying to say it didn’t happen. And it happened. I did those things, and they weren’t pardonable. “I don’t want the pardon. And I … reject the pardon.”.
Riddle entered the US Senate parliamentarian’s office, drank a bottle of wine, stole a book and inflicted damage at the Capitol when Trump supporters attacked the building on 6 January 2021 in a desperate attempt to the then president in office after he lost the presidency to Joe Biden weeks earlier, according to court documents. He received a 90-day prison sentence and was fined $750 in April 2022 for pleading guilty to committing misdemeanors in an attack that was linked to several deaths, including officer suicides.
After Trump won back the White House by defeating Kamala Harris in November, he gave blanket pardons or commutations to 1,500 people charged or convicted in the attack on Congress carried out in his name. But at minimum a couple of Capitol attackers had turned down Trump’s clemency, which was one of his most prominent campaign promises as he ran against Harris.
