Pam Hemphill, the so-called “MAGA Granny” who refused a pardon from President Donald Trump after getting convicted for rioting at the Capitol on Jan. 6, 2021, returned on the attack’s fifth anniversary with a message.
“Once I got away from the MAGA cult and started educating myself about Jan. 6, I knew what I did was wrong,” she said. “I pleaded guilty to my crimes because I did the crime. I received due process, and the DOJ was not weaponized against me.”
Hemphill was one of several people who testified Tuesday at a House hearing marking five years since Trump’s followers violently stormed the Capitol in an effort to prevent Congress from certifying Joe Biden’s election win.
The 73-year-old traveled from Idaho to Washington, D.C., at the time to see Trump speak because she “had fallen for the president’s lies, just like many of his supporters.”
“Local people had welcomed me into the circle when I was around them. I heard them saying things like, ‘The Democrats are trying to turn this into a communist country,’ or, ‘The radical left wants to do away with our Constitution,’” she recalled on Tuesday. “The gaslighting caused a lot of fear, and I was scared.”
