The President of the United States, Donald Trump, granted a general pardon to all those convicted, accused, prosecuted and investigated for the assault on the Capitol on January 6, 2021. There are more than 1,500. The vast majority have celebrated and expressed gratitude, especially those who were serving prison sentences. One of the assailants, however, rejects the pardon granted by Trump. This is Pamela Hemphill, 71, who expressed her rejection of the pardon in an interview with the Idaho Statesman published this Wednesday. She appears remorseful for what she did that day and now considers that she has regained her senses after being dragged by what she now considers a “sect.”
“Accepting the pardon would be an insult to the Capitol Police officers, the rule of law and our nation,” Hemphill declared in an interview published by the newspaper of Boise, the capital of Idaho. “The criminals of January 6 are trying to rewrite history by saying that it was not a riot; that it was not an insurrection. “I don’t want to be part of their attempt to rewrite what happened that day,” he explained in the interview. Hemphill, who at times was called “the MAGA grandmother.”
Despite having recently undergone surgery to remove cancerous breast tissue, she traveled to Washington in January 2021 with the stitches still in place. “My brother told me, ‘You’re going to start chemotherapy soon, so why don’t you go?’ It will probably be Trump’s last act.’ And I thought yes, because you can’t do anything once you start chemotherapy.” After Trump’s rally he began speaking to a group of Proud Boys [Muchachos Orgullosos]a far-right militia, followed them to the Capitol and was one of those that stormed the Congress headquarters that day.
Hemphill was broadcasting his entry into the Capitol that day with videos uploaded to social networks. After being identified and charged, she pleaded guilty in 2022 to a misdemeanor charge of parading, demonstrating or picketing the Capitol building in exchange for prosecutors dropping three other misdemeanor charges. A judge sentenced her to two months in prison, three years of probation and a fine of $500 (480 euros) in federal court in Washington. His sentence was already served.
In a video shared on Facebook, Hemphill filmed right next to a partially destroyed door, according to the Statesman in his day. In the footage, she could be heard telling a man that her “knees were broken” and that several people “stomped on her.” “They stepped on me, threw me to the ground, cut my knee, broke my glasses, stepped on my head, pulled my shoulder. The agents picked me up and put me behind them,” he recalls in his statements this week to the Idaho newspaper. Hemphill said he ended up struggling to breathe and in a lot of pain, especially around his stitches, and regretting not leaving and staying to record.
Hemphill now has officers from the U.S. Capitol Police and the Metropolitan Police Department on her mind, including those who protected her. The attackers injured about 140, according to the Department of Justice. “The pardon is a slap in his face. It’s as if the country has let them down. “They were the heroes that day,” says the woman.
‘Grandma MAGA’ became interested in politics after her retirement and became close to far-right groups that she now sees as a sect. “I got my critical thinking back and started doing my own research, which I’m guilty of not doing then, because you get fooled a lot,” Hemphill told the Boise newspaper. “It’s very strange when you leave a sect. “You look back and wonder what you were thinking,” he added.
The Supreme Court of the United States ruled in 1833, and later confirmed that ruling in 1915, that a beneficiary has the power to reject a presidential pardon, but it has also ruled cases to the contrary, such as when in 1927 it denied a convicted person the ability to reject the presidential commutation of the death sentence.
