Donald Trump: Capitol stormer rejects pardon

Pamela Maghill was among the angry mob that stormed the Capitol in Washington on January 6, 2021. The 71-year-old was a fanatical supporter of Donald Trump and well-known in “Make America Great Again” circles: her nickname was “Maga-Grandma.” For her role in the storming of the Capitol, she was sentenced in 2022 to 60 days in prison, three years of probation and $500 in restitution.

Donald Trump is now president again and, in the first moments of his term in office, issued comprehensive pardons for everyone convicted in connection with January 6th. Also for Pamela Maghill – but she doesn’t want that at all: she rejects the pardon. She has fundamentally changed her views and is purified. Maghill today sees the storming of the Capitol as a serious mistake.

“We were wrong that day,” she told the BBC looking back. “We broke the law.” Therefore the convictions were correct and there should now be no pardons. “Accepting a pardon would be an insult to the Capitol Police officers, the rule of law and our nation,” Maghill said. The Trump administration is trying to “rewrite history.” If she accepted a pardon, she would “contribute to this narrative.”

The former counselor for drug and alcohol addictions pleaded guilty in court. While Donald Trump is of the opinion that many of the 1,500 people convicted “did nothing wrong,” Pamela Maghill now finds clear words for what happened: “It was an uprising, a riot.” A therapist helped her to recognize her role in this and to turn away from the MAGA movement.

As she told Spiegel last year, Hemphill fell into the clutches of Trump supporters out of loneliness. Her difficult childhood also played a role. The woman from South Carolina first came into contact with the “Maga Girls,” a group of right-wing women. Then she joined the anti-state movement “People’s Rights” of the right-wing extremist activist Ammon Bundy. Her streams of right-wing rallies were a success on social media; about the storming of the Capitol, Hemphill wrote on Facebook: “The planned Trump rally on January 6th won’t be fun, it’s a war!”

The 71-year-old dropout no longer wants to have anything to do with Donald Trump and his supporters. “Today I know that this is a cult,” she says. “And I was part of that cult.”