^CNN

Boise, Idaho

On January 6, 2021, Pamela Hemphill was an eager participant in the storming of the United States Capitol, urging her compatriots to “come on in, come on, have fun… This is your house!” But when Donald Trump pardoned the insurrectionists four years later, Hemphill broke ranks and turned her pardon down.

Hemphill, now 72, had retired to Boise, Idaho, after a career as a drug-and-alcohol abuse counselor in California. She voted for Trump in 2016 and again in 2020, becoming more committed to his MAGA cause after attending some anti-mask-mandate protests organized by the rightwing activist Ammon Bundy. As a Christmas gift that year, Hemphill’s brother bought her a plane ticket to Washington, D.C., so she could join the “Stop the Steal” rally and stream it to her tens of thousands of Facebook and YouTube followers.

After her arrival at the Capitol, Hemphill pushed past police lines three times, made her way into the Rotunda, and ended up in the office of then-Democratic Speaker of the House Nancy Pelosi, live-streaming all the while. At her trial in federal court the following year, she pleaded guilty to one count of demonstrating, picketing or parading in a Capitol building. She received a sentence of 60 days’ imprisonment and 36 months’ probation.

Hemphill began to rethink her beliefs during her time in prison. After her release, “my critical thinking returned,” she told a reporter for the New York Times, citing a period in therapy and some Twitter conversations that gave her a fresh understanding of the facts. “Now I know it was a cult, and I was in a cult,” she said, adding that if she had accepted a pardon she would have been “continuing their propaganda, their gaslighting and all their falsehoods they’re putting out there about January 6.”

On the fifth anniversary of that day, Hemphill appeared at an unofficial hearing organized by some of the House Democrats who had served on the former special committee investigating the attack. She took the occasion to apologize to the police officers she had scorned and defied in January 2021. “I am truly sorry from the bottom of my heart,” Hemphill testified, “for being part of the mob that put you and so many officers in danger.”

Posted on January 23, 2026