A January 6th insurrectionist who was pardoned by Donald Trump has been convicted of molesting children—and he allegedly tried to use the promise of a payout from the Trump administration to keep one of his victims quiet.
WHAT’S GOING ON: A jury in Hernando County, Florida, found Andrew Paul Johnson, 45, guilty on five charges including molesting a child under 12 and another under 16, according to NBC News. He also was convicted of lewd and lascivious exhibition and transmitting harmful materials by electronic device to a minor.
Johnson faces life in prison when he’s sentenced in March.
THE DETAILS: Johnson—who called himself “American Terrorist” and “Proud j6er” online—entered the U.S. Capitol through a broken window on January 6, 2021, and engaged in “disorderly and disruptive conduct” for more than four hours.
He pleaded guilty to nonviolent charges in 2024, and Trump pardoned him on day one of his second term, along with more than 1,500 other January 6th defendants.
Here’s where it gets even darker: According to a sheriff’s affidavit, Johnson tried to leverage his pardon to silence one of his child victims. Discord messages showed Johnson sneaking to a child’s home to bring food and “hang out.” He told the child that since he was pardoned, he was being awarded “$10,000,000 as a result of being a ‘jan 6’er'” and would put the victim in his will.
“This tactic was believed to be used to keep [the victim] from exposing what Andrew had done to him,” the affidavit states.
OF COURSE: No January 6th rioter has actually received any compensation from the Trump administration (YET). Trump has floated the idea, and his administration did settle with Ashli Babbitt’s family for just under $5 million in May—but there’s no $10 million windfall for random insurrectionists. Johnson appears to have simply invented the payout to manipulate a child abuse victim into silence.
ZOOM OUT: Johnson isn’t the only pardoned January 6th defendant now facing new criminal charges. Christopher P. Moynihan pleaded guilty this week to harassing House Minority Leader Hakeem Jeffries, threatening to kill the Democratic congressman.
WHY IT MATTERS: Trump’s mass pardons of January 6th defendants were framed as correcting supposed injustice. What they actually did was release more than 1,500 people—many of them violent—back into society with clean slates and a sense of impunity.
Johnson’s case shows exactly where that leads: a man who stormed the Capitol now convicted of child molestation, apparently emboldened enough by his pardon to believe he could buy silence from his victims with promises of MAGA money that doesn’t exist.