While President Donald Trump pardoned roughly 1,500 participants in the Jan. 6 insurrection on his first day in office, one of them is saying thanks but no thanks. Pamela Hemphill, a 71-year-old nicknamed the “MAGA Granny,” has disavowed her prior support of Trump, telling Newsweek that she believes the president “has committed crimes and needs to be held accountable.”
Hemphill advocated for Kamala Harris ahead of the 2024 election and posted a video to X on Tuesday, Jan. 21, in which she said she’d reject a Trump pardon.
“I will not accept a pardon because that would be an insult to the Capitol Police officers, to the rule of law and to the nation. I pleaded guilty because I was guilty,” Hemphill said.
Hemphill received a 60-day prison sentence, 36 months of probation and a $500 fine. She pleaded guilty in 2022 to one count of parading, picketing or demonstrating in a Capitol building.
President Trump’s supporters have largely welcomed the pardons. However, pardons of participants charged or convicted with assaulting police officers drew pushback from multiple congressional Republicans.
“Many of them, it was probably the right thing to do. They made a bad, a bad choice,” Sen. Thom Tillis, R-N.C., told Spectrum News. “But anybody who is convicted of assault on a police officer, I can’t get there at all. I think it was a bad idea.”
“I do have an issue with those who assaulted police officers,” Rep. Nicole Malliotakis, R-N.Y., told CNN. “And I think that those do need to serve the time. That is unacceptable. I’ve always sided with our police officers in saying that any assault or cop killers –– the cop killers should never be released.”
Hemphill is not the first recent pardon recipient to express interest in rejecting the pardon.
Two federal death row inmates who received commutations from outgoing President Joe Biden filed motions to try to block the president’s decisions in their cases. They say it would hurt their efforts to prove their innocence.
However, rejecting a presidential pardon is an uphill legal battle for people who wish to do so.
A 1927 Supreme Court case ruled that presidents do not need the consent of convicts to grant them pardons, commutations or clemency.