Jan. 6 Rioter Rejects Trump’s Pardon After Epiphany: ‘He Doesn’t Care About Anybody But Himself’
A New Hampshire man who participated in the Jan. 6, 2021 assault on the US Capitol told a news outlet Friday he had rejected a pardon of his crimes signed by President Donald Trump earlier this week.
Jason Riddle was photographed drinking looted wine during the attack from a Senate office and sentenced to 90 days in jail, the Justice Department said in April 2022 after a plea agreement. In addition to his 90-day jail sentence, Riddle was ordered to pay restitution, undergo community service, and serve three years of probation.
He told New Hampshire Public Radio on Friday that an image of him drinking stolen wine was indicative of the life he was leading at the time – one in which his mindset was “apocalyptic.”
Riddle also said he never believed the 2020 election was stolen from Trump but saw the Jan. 6 Capitol protest as an excuse to consume alcohol. Riddle said:
I’m a recovering alcoholic. At the time, I was not recovering. I would combine alcohol with my politics and I’d put it online too. I spent a lot of time on social media in the comments section arguing with strangers about nothing. And it just became more or less my identity. The less I had a life, the louder I was about being a Trump supporter. And instead of trying to figure out what was causing these problems, looking at myself, I blamed other people and politics. That’s easy to do. And I fit right into the MAGA circle.
Riddle, who is now sober, said he found out by watching the news earlier this week he had been pardoned. He told NHPR’s Rick Ganley he wanted nothing to do with the pardon:
It’s almost like he 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 also learned that I can reject the pardon. And I did reject the pardon because I’m thinking down the road [if] an employer looks in my background, they see misdemeanors… Misdemeanors with a presidential pardon — I think that tends to draw more attention. 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 the job I’m applying to, if they like Trump.
I’m a recovering alcoholic. And I also had some other mental health problems. That’s a bad mix, it’s a vicious cycle. I got rid of drinking, and now I have no problem. I’m able to handle my mental health problems, but I still just can’t help but think of all the the suicides amongst the Capitol Police officers since the riot. I can empathize. I just can’t imagine – it’s got to be real hard for anyone working in that department with him coming back into office and now pardoning 1,500 people who assaulted their brothers and sisters on that day. And I think about them.
Asked by Ganley when he stopped supporting Trump, Riddle said he had an “epiphany” during the now-president’s legal troubles.
“After I got out of prison, Trump had gotten indicted and he put on social media asking people to come out and protest for him. And I remember thinking, ‘What are you doing, Trump? Remember what happened at the riot? Someone might get hurt. Why would you ask people to protest?'” he said. “And that’s when I had the epiphany, the duh moment, where I’m like, ‘He asked this because he doesn’t care about anybody other than himself.’ That’s when on the inside I knew and I stopped supporting him.”
