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”.
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.
Beside Riddle, 71-year-old Pamela Hemphill told the Guardian on Thursday that she was taking responsibility for the hand she had in what was an attempt to prevent the certification of Biden’s victory over Trump in the 2020 presidential election.
Hemphill, who received a 60-day misdemeanor prison sentence and three years of probation after pleading guilty in 2022 to illicitly demonstrating, picketing or parading at the Capitol, said accepting Trump’s pardon would contribute to “propaganda that [the attack] was a peaceful protest”.
Riddle, for his part, told NHPR that he believed rejecting Trump’s pardon would boost his employment prospects moving forward.
“I’m thinking down the road [if] an employer looks in my background, they see misdemeanors … with a presidential pardon – I think that tends to draw more attention,” Riddle said.
Referring to the president’s “Make America great again slogan”, Riddle added: “And I’m sure that’s fine in the Maga world with whoever supports Trump, but I don’t want to spend the rest of my life wondering if [those at] the job I’m applying to … like Trump.”
There is not a consensus among legal experts over whether people like Riddle and Hemphill can legally reject Trump’s pardon. Hemphill told the Idaho Statesman that she plans to file a letter formally rejecting the pardon. And the outlet cited an 1833 US supreme court ruling later upheld in 1915 that a recipient can turn down a presidential pardon.
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In contrast, a formal federal prosecutor recently wrote that commutations and pardons do not depend on defendants’ consent. And the New York Times quoted University of St Thomas law school professor Mark Osler as saying: “It would be a novel act to file a court case to reject a pardon of a misdemeanor, in part because of the low stakes.”
Riddle served in the US navy from 2006 to 2010, and he has also worked as a corrections officer, restaurant server and mail carrier. Describing himself as a recovering alcoholic, Riddle told NHPR he was not in recovery at the time he partook in the Capitol attack.
Riddle stopped supporting the president after he got out of prison and saw Trump ask his supporters to protest as the then ex-president braced to be charged with falsifying business records in a case that involved hush-money payments to adult film actor Stormy Daniels.
“I remember thinking, ‘What are you doing, Trump?’” Riddle said to NHPR. “Remember what happened at the [Capitol] riot? Someone might get hurt. Why would you ask people to protest?”
New York state prosecutors ultimately convicted Trump of 34 felonies in the case, though his winning a second presidency prevented him from receiving a substantial sentence.
Riddle’s rejection of Trump’s pardon came months after he ran as a Republican for one of New Hampshire’s two US House seats. He failed to advance out of the election’s primary in September.
