A Navy veteran who admitted to drinking wine he found while participating in the Jan. 6, 2021, insurrection on the Capitol has since denounced President Donald Trump and is seeking to formally refuse the presidential pardon issued to more than 1,500 rioters.
“I caused a lot of hurt by being down there. I hurt a lot of people along the way, I said a lot of nasty things,” Jason Riddle told WMUR. “I have to acknowledge that reality, and part of that is not taking any sort of pardon or pass or anything from Trump that denies that reality, because once you do that, I’m right back where I started.”
Riddle, a New Hampshire resident, told ABC News earlier this year that he was struggling with alcohol at the time of the riot and was “obsessed with Trump.”
Photographs from the insurrection show a selfie of Riddle posing with a bottle of wine he found on or in a refrigerator and holding a red book he stole from the Office of the Senate Parliamentarian. He left the scene when a police officer arrived.
“I clearly was obsessed with Trump. I was mentally being held hostage to something that was just sucking me dry,” Riddle told WMUR.
