Nearly 100 of the Jan. 6 Rioters Trump Pardoned Were Re-Arrested For New Crimes, New Report Says

Late last year, government watchdog CREW (Citizens for Responsibility and Ethics in Washington) revealed that 33 of the 1,600 insurrectionists that stormed the Capitol on Jan. 6, 2021—and who were pardoned by Trump in his first day back in office—were re-arrested, charged, and sentenced for other crimes since 2021. At the time, CREW emphasized that this was a likely undercount, and in June updated the count to 40. Well, apparently, we still didn’t even know the half (or triple) of it.

On Thursday, Lawfare Media published a new report upping the pardoners’ crime spree count to 97, revealing also that five of them were arrested for conduct they did after Trump gave them clemency. Of these crimes, dozens also include sex crimes and crimes relating to child sex abuse material (CSAM); several include domestic violence charges; and at least 20 include driving under the influence of alcohol and drugs, or being publicly intoxicated. Per this updated count, 1 in 16 pardoned insurrectionists have re-offended.

Because the crimes include a constellation of alleged and proven charges out of a large group of individuals who are not monitored or reported on, Lawfare says tracking down their recidivism rates is a hard task. It was made especially difficult after the Justice Department vanished various records of Jan. 6 defendants in 2026—scrubbing from its databases their cases, and their involvements in the riot.

NEW: A stunning new project from @lawfare‘s Katherine Pompilio finds that 97 Jan. 6ers who received clemency for their role in the Capitol riot then got arrested, charged, and/or convicted with subsequent crimes—a number much higher than previously reported. pic.twitter.com/g5lCRM7apZ

— Tyler McBrien (@TylerMcBrien) June 4, 2026

 

Still, the stories of Jan. 6’ers re-committing crimes have largely trickled through the news cycle in the year-and-a-half they’ve been granted clemency. Recently, in April, TMZ reported that David Daniel—who, according to his now-deleted record on the DOJ website, was arrested and charged for his involvement in Jan. 6 for assaulting police officers—was found guilty of coercing a minor younger than 12 to “engage in sexually explicit conduct for the purpose of producing any visual depiction of the conduct in 2015 and 2016.” After his arrest, federal investigators found hundreds of CSAM images and videos.

About a month before that, Andrew Paul Johnson, who entered the Capitol through a broken window in Jan. 6, was sentenced to life after a jury convicted him of molesting and lewdly exhibiting himself to two children. One was under 12, the other under 16. (He was arrested for child sex abuse charges in August.) According to court documents, he even bribed one of the victims with hush money he claimed he was expecting from his pardon, saying that because he received clemency, he’d soon get $10,000 and add the kid to his own will. 

And Christopher Moynihan—one of the rioters who broke into the east side of the Capitol building and was serving a 21-year prison sentence before granted clemency—in October also threatened to murder House Minority Leader Hakeem Jeffries (D-New York) ahead of a speech during the then-ongoing government shutdown. According to the police report, Moynihan sent out a text message that read, “I cannot allow this terrorist to live,” and “I will kill him for the future.” He received felony charges. 

Audaciously, the Jan. 6’ers that have weaseled their way back into society have also spent their freedom running for office and taking on positions at the administration, such as Elias Irizarry, who on Jan. 6 was charged with entering the Capitol through a broken window while holding a metal pole, and who this week was reported to be a new hire of an antiterrorism unit in the Pentagon.

But even if these rioters participated in an event that caused widespread panic, forced evacuations across the Capitol, and five deaths—including that of a policeman—it seems that Trump won’t just stop with pardons, or scrubbing from the Internet their nefarious track record. Sigh. At least they’re not being funneled cash anymore.