‘MAGA Granny’ Rejects Trump Pardon
One of the oldest Capitol rioters has turned down a pardon issued by President Donald Trump to some 1,500 convicts in the Jan. 6 insurrection.
Pamela Hemphill, 71, said she no longer wanted to participate in efforts to “rewrite history.”
“Accepting the pardon would be an insult to the Capitol Police officers, to the rule of law, to our nation,” she told the Idaho Statesman.
In a separate interview with The New York Times, Hemphill said accepting a pardon would mean “continuing their propaganda, their gaslighting, and all their falsehoods they’re putting out there about Jan. 6.”
Hemphill was dubbed the “MAGA Granny” after she joined hundreds of people who stormed the Capitol to stop the certification of former President Joe Biden’s election win in 2021.
But she’s no longer under the spell of the “the Trump cult.”
“You don’t see it as a cult when you’re in it,” she told The Daily Beast last year. “You don’t recognize it.”
Hemphill, a retired substance abuse counselor from Idaho, has since become an outspoken critic of Trump on social media.
“I will refuse a pardon from felon Trump!” she wrote on X after word began to spread that Trump would pardon Capitol rioters.
I’m not going to be bullied by MAGA anymore, as those who went as far as calling my Probation Officer trying to get me in trouble backfired on them, thinking I would stop speaking out, just give me more confidence to continue!
I will refuse a pardon from felon Trump!… https://t.co/WwCAcxduZh— Pam Hemphill (@PamHemphill79) January 12, 2025
Hours after he was sworn in as the 47th president, Trump signed an order granting “complete and unconditional pardon” for about 1,500 insurrectionists.
Five people, including a police officer, died in the violent riot. Another four officers died by suicide in the aftermath.
Prominent Republican senators have condemned Trump’s sweeping pardons.
“I do fear the message that is sent to these great men and women that stood by us,” Alaska Senator Lisa Murkowski told CNN.