Trump’s pardons delight Jan. 6 offenders

WASHINGTON — Gina Bisignano’s strategy paid off. For years, the Jan. 6 defendant had done anything and everything she could to delay her criminal case in connection with her actions during the Capitol attack, hoping and praying that Donald Trump would be re-elected and pardon her.

On Monday, just two days before her 56th birthday, Bisignano had another reason to celebrate, when Trump issued pardons that erased the case against her. A federal judge signed the dismissal on Tuesday. On Wednesday, Bisignano was a free woman. 

“I have no regrets,” Bisignano said, adding that she wouldn’t change anything even if “you handed me a million dollars.” 

It was a common thread among a dozen interviews NBC News conducted with Jan. 6 offenders who received pardons from Trump this week. They were uniformly grateful for Trump’s deliverance, but unlike in many of the sentencing hearings held at Washington’s federal courthouse in recent years, signs of remorse were in short supply, though a few others have expressed contrition. Many still hold onto the false, debunked notion — stoked by Trump as recently as Monday, while standing in the Capitol — that the 2020 election was stolen. And while some of those pardoned spoke words of conciliation, others hinted eagerly at a reckoning to come.

Bisignano told NBC News she believes that God placed her in the lower west tunnel of the Capitol, where some of the worst violence took place on Jan. 6, 2021, and where she picked up a megaphone and encouraged a mob of her fellow Trump supporters to join the battle.

She initially cooperated with law enforcement, testifying against a fellow Trump supporter she knew from California. But her testimony wasn’t very useful, with U.S. District Judge Amy Berman Jackson calling Bisignano “a hot mess” and “possibly one of the worst witnesses” she’d ever heard. Now, Bisignano said, she has “prevailed” and come out “much stronger” on the other side of the experience.

“The hunters have become the hunted,” she said, predicting that the federal prosecutors who pursued her case would be fired and calling for Jackson to be removed as well. “She needs to be impeached,” Bisignano said. “She’s on the wrong side of history, Ms. Amy Jackson. I’d like to have a little conversation with her.”

Bisignano wasn’t the only one celebrating. Outside the D.C. jail, supporters quickly bought up MAGA hats from a vendor to hand out to prisoners upon their release. One of those gathered was Eric Ball, whose son Daniel was in jail facing charges of setting off an explosive device in the lower west Capitol tunnel during the riot. Eric Ball said the riot was a setup: “Anybody who denies it is either incredibly evil, or irredeemably stupid,” he said.

(Daniel Ball is one of only a handful of Jan. 6 rioters still in custody: He was rearrested on gun charges, related to past convictions for domestic violence by strangulation and battery against a law enforcement officer, following his release in Washington.)

Gregory Purdy, who was convicted of six felonies, including assaulting law enforcement officers, was among those still holding onto the false claims that the 2020 election was rigged. 

“Even if we have a difference of opinion, I believe the people there were defending democracy,” Purdy said upon his release from the D.C. jail on Tuesday. “I believe that we had an election that had major computational issues.” 

Caleb Fuller, the younger half of a father-son pair facing felony civil disorder charges of resisting police on Jan. 6, said after his case was dismissed that he still believes the 2020 election was stolen and that he saw no violence during the Capitol riot. 

Ryan Wilson, who was found guilty of six felonies after prosecutors presented evidence of him using a pipe as a weapon against police in a Capitol tunnel, also called the charges he faced “phony” upon his release from the D.C. jail. 

Rachel Powell was sentenced to five years in prison (and served just over a year) for actions on Jan. 6, 2021, that included using an ice axe to destroy a window at the Capitol. Asked what she would change if she could go back in time after receiving her pardon, Powell said, “You know what, when the police became violent and everything started getting out of control, I wish we would’ve all just sat down.”

Others’ thoughts quickly turned more ominous.

William Sarsfield, who was convicted of committing violence in the Capitol, headed to Washington to await the release of friends after he got out of the federal detention center in Philadelphia.

He thanked Trump profusely for pardoning him and issued a vague threat when asked what he would do next: “To regroup, go home and find out the nefarious actors in local homes and towns, because we’ve got to take care of our own house. and it starts there,” Sarsfield said, wearing a camouflage hat emblazoned with the words “Biden sucks.”

Another prominent Jan. 6 offender, Jacob Chansley, posted on X that he was going to buy guns after receiving his pardon and having gun rights restored. “EVERYTHING done in the dark WILL come to light!” he continued. 

But Purdy and some others did sound notes of reconciliation. 

“We’re still brothers and sisters, we’ve still got to love each other. … You’ve got to make sure that you don’t have hate in your heart for anybody,” Purdy told NBC News. “So to my liberal brothers and sisters, I reach my arm across and say, let’s find common ground.”

Guy Reffitt, who was turned in by his son over his role on Jan. 6, said he loved his son in an interview shortly after he was released. His son, Jackson, told MSNBC earlier on Wednesday that he “can’t imagine being safe now” that his father had been released and that he had bought a gun for protection.

Mostly, the pardon recipients were effusive in their praise of Trump, whose false statements about the 2020 election being stolen helped set off the chain of events that led many of them to the Capitol when the Electoral College results were set to be certified. 

“Thank you, cause he’s put my family back together again. Without him, I wouldn’t be out right now,” Powell said of Trump.

One inmate in the D.C. jail, speaking by phone to a small crowd gathered outside on Monday, said he and others had been watching as Trump mentioned pardoning Jan. 6 offenders in remarks shortly after his inaugural address. 

“You’re going to see a lot of action on the J6 hostages,” Trump had said to an overflow crowd of supporters in the Capitol’s Emancipation Hall, after suggestng that advisers had asked him to leave that out of his inaugural address to make the speech more “unifying.” 

Stewart Rhodes, the former leader of the Oath Keepers militia who was found guilty by a federal jury of charges that included seditious conspiracy, had his 18-year sentence commuted by Trump. Rhodes’ first stop after his release was outside the D.C. jail, where he commended the president for doing “the right thing” and said he and others had not received a “fair trial” in front of a “fair jury.” (Multiple Jan. 6 convictions have been upheld by a federal appeals court that considered and dismissed claims of jury bias.)

On Wednesday, reporters spotted Rhodes in one of the House of Representatives’ office buildings in the Capitol complex. He said he was there to advocate for the release of a fellow Oath Keeper, Jeremy Brown, who is still in prison because he was convicted of other federal charges unrelated to Jan. 6.

“He needs a pardon also,” Rhodes said. “No man left behind.”