A former Trump supporter jailed over the US Capitol riots has said she’s rejected the president’s pardon after seeing through the “MAGA cult”.
Pamela Hemphill told Sky’s The News Hour with Mark Austin it would be a “slap in the face to the rule of law, the Capitol police officers and to our nation”.
Mr Trump has pardoned about 1,500 supporters charged over the violence on 6 January 2021, which saw people storm the Capitol building in Washington to try to stop Joe Biden’s victory being signed off.
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Ms Hemphill was jailed for 60 days for her role and admitted she was part of what she now calls the “MAGA cult”.
She said the Capitol attack “was an insurrection” and she didn’t “want to be a part of helping them rewrite history” by accepting the pardon and having her conviction erased.
“I was guilty. I pleaded guilty,” she added.
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President Trump told reporters on Wednesday the rioters had “already served years in prison” and had been treated harshly compared with other groups.
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Ms Hemphill told Sky News she didn’t realise at the time she was part of a “cult” and that Mr Trump had put out the “big lie that the election was stolen”.
“But when you’re in the MAGA cult, they gaslight you so much and tell you not to listen to anybody but Trump. And you go along with them and don’t do your own research,” Ms Hemphill said.
She added: “Later, as I found out, all of this has been nothing but propaganda and lies, and that Trump truly is a dangerous narcissist.”
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Ms Hemphill said the mass reprieve given to the rioters, who include members of far-right extremist group the Proud Boys, could embolden them.
“Now it’s like a free ticket to be violent even more,” she said.
The group’s leader, Henry ‘Enrique’ Tarrio, jailed for 22 years for seditious conspiracy – the longest doled out for the riots – is among those freed.
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Elmer Stewart Rhodes, leader of the militant Oath Keepers group, has also been released from an 18-year sentence.
Ms Hemphill said it would be a “nightmare” if – as rumoured – some of those pardoned are invited to the White House and that she’s written to Congress and offered to tell them “what really happened” on the day of the infamous riot.
