“I was okay with being a convict,” Jason Riddle instructed me this week, not lengthy after studying that he was among the many roughly 1,500 recipients of sweeping presidential pardons. Some People, together with President Donald Trump, imagine that Riddle and others who rioted on the Capitol on January 6, 2021, had been unjustly persecuted and thus deserving of clemency—if not celebration. Riddle, a 36-year-old New Hampshire resident, rejects this framing. “I’m not a patriot or a hero simply because the man who began the riot says it’s okay,” he instructed me.
On Thursday, after consulting along with his public defender, Riddle despatched a pithy e-mail to the Division of Justice:
To whom it might concern,
I’d wish to reject my pardon please.
Sincerely,
Jason RiddleDespatched from my iPhone
Declining the pardon falls inside Riddle’s authorized rights. Many different January 6ers are holding out their fingers for the president’s reward. “I can’t look myself within the mirror and try this,” Riddle mentioned. Slightly than whitewash his unsavory previous, he feels known as to personal his habits, even his most shameful moments—a tenet of Alcoholics Nameless, which he says has saved him.
Some insurrectionists stormed the Capitol as true ideological warriors. Enrique Tarrio, a former chief of the Proud Boys, and Stewart Rhodes, founding father of the Oath Keepers, for instance, had been convicted of seditious conspiracy towards america (and each males are actually free). However many others who participated within the violence and destruction that day had been much like Riddle—individuals with peculiar lives and peculiar issues who discovered group and catharsis within the MAGA motion.
Not one of the above is an excuse for collaborating in one of many ugliest moments in American historical past. However actively planning to hold out violence is arguably completely different from getting swept up in a mob. At present, Riddle doesn’t shirk his complicity. However the path that led him to the Capitol sheds mild on how somebody with out a lot route out of the blue discovered it in a day of rage and mayhem. His story additionally raises an intriguing chance: An individual who stumbled into the darker corners of Trumpism may stumble out.
For Riddle, the street to January 6 started after he graduated from highschool, years earlier than Trump’s first marketing campaign. He served within the Navy and, in response to his sentencing memo, “was honorably launched from energetic obligation to the naval reserves in mild of reocurring [sic] struggles with alcohol use.” In faculty, at Southern Connecticut State College, as an older scholar, he determined to main in political science. On campus, he recollects feeling surrounded by youthful Bernie Sanders supporters, whereas he took a liking to Trump. He described himself and one other early Trump-supporting buddy as “obnoxious,” noting that they’d continuously drink in school. Throughout Trump’s first presidential marketing campaign, Riddle drove to rallies everywhere in the nation. At first he instructed himself that, as a poli-sci main, he was making anthropological area journeys. In reality, he was changing into swept up in MAGA world.
He preferred the thrill and controversy that surrounded Trump. “There was this aggression. I feel I actually loved it,” he mentioned. He’d pregame earlier than the rallies, then be a part of the crowds listening to the long run president rant. “You go, , bond with these strangers,” he mentioned. At the moment in his life, Riddle remembers having barely some other pursuits or hobbies. He didn’t watch sports activities or train. He’d sit at dwelling, consuming and trolling. “I spent all my time in these feedback [sections] on social media, arguing with strangers,” Riddle mentioned. “It was all about proving somebody incorrect. That will make me be ok with myself.”
After faculty, he struggled to carry down a job. Finally, he discovered work as a mail service for the Postal Service. On his route, he’d ruminate. He’d keep it up lengthy conversations with a consuming buddy. “I’d simply be on the cellphone with my Bluetooth in, speaking to a different maniac who thinks like me, whereas simply slowly going loopy,” Riddle mentioned.
Radicalization is usually a gradual course of. He described himself as extra of a libertarian than a MAGA Republican. In Trumpism, although, Riddle discovered an always-there outlet for his pent-up dissatisfaction with how his life was unfolding. However Trump’s time in workplace was working out. As he plotted to cling to energy by determined means, the president and his allies had been spreading conspiracy theories about alleged voter fraud, together with lies about mail-in ballots. “So I’m, like, actually working on the mail, which is what I believed to be a part of the issue with the election,” Riddle mentioned. Within the weeks earlier than the rebel, he instructed me, he was consuming extra closely than ever. Generally, he’d stash further booze within the mailbag he carried for the day’s rounds.
In the future, drunk on the job, he abruptly give up, leaving piles of mail in his truck. Quickly, he and two buddies had been driving from New Hampshire to Washington, D.C. One was a Trump supporter; the opposite, Riddle now thinks, was simply alongside for the experience. Riddle’s personal dedication to the “Cease the Steal” narrative concerned some doublethink. “I do know I’m incorrect,” Riddle recollects telling himself. “Fuck it; I’m happening in any case.”
He recollects very clearly when he stepped over a barrier and marched into the Capitol. His buddies stopped following him. “I keep in mind really seeing politicians from the place I used to be standing,” he instructed me. “I may inform they had been scared. I do keep in mind having fun with that.”
Photographs of a few of the different Capitol invaders quickly unfold on social media: the Viking-helmeted QAnon Shaman, the person along with his toes up on Nancy Pelosi’s desk, the man carrying the speaker’s lectern. Riddle, too, achieved a sort of immortality: He was the insurrectionist hoisting a bottle of wine. Within the speedy aftermath of the occasion, Riddle felt no regret, or disgrace, or want to cover. He bragged about his exploits on an area newscast, and briefly loved his newfound virality. He quickly obtained a go to from the FBI.
Along with pilfering booze from the Senate parliamentarian’s workplace, Riddle had stolen a leather-bound e-book labeled Senate Process, and rapidly hawked it to a fellow rioter for $40. On April 4, 2022, at federal court docket in Washington, he was sentenced to 90 days in jail. “Three months for attempting to cease the steal, one sip of wine at a time?” Riddle bragged to a New Hampshire newspaper. “Completely price it.”
Even in jail, he nonetheless had his fame—or infamy. He remembers a correctional officer muttering “Let’s go, Brandon” to him on his first day, he instructed me, and that his fellow inmates nicknamed him “Trump.” However not like some January 6ers, Riddle wasn’t additional radicalized in jail, the place he spent the summer time of 2022. However neither did his conviction instantly lead him to repudiate the trigger that had taken him to the Capitol. Riddle talked about working for Congress, leveraging what remained of his fleeting movie star. He as soon as filed paperwork, however by no means obtained any marketing campaign off the bottom.
Riddle thought he’d be capable to handle his consuming after his launch. However he struggled, and shortly started attending day by day Alcoholics Nameless conferences. He has relapsed just a few instances, however thanks largely to what he calls the “compelled intervention” of his encounter with the criminal-justice system, he’s been residing his “new life” for a bit greater than two years. Though sobriety stays a day by day undertaking, he feels he has lastly gained perception into the reckless and self-destructive habits that led him to the January 6 rebel.
These days, he’s working at a restaurant in Harmony, New Hampshire. He instructed me he feels comfy in chaotic environments, and he’s interested by searching for a job at a hospital or in mental-health providers. Sobriety has modified his political perspective, too. Whereas he as soon as considered Trump as a daring fact teller, uncooked and unvarnished, he now sees the president as self-serving. When Trump known as for public protests across the time of his indictments, Riddle felt particularly performed. “And I keep in mind considering, like, why would he try this? Folks died on the Capitol riot,” Riddle mentioned. “That was the ‘duh’ second I had with myself: Effectively, clearly as a result of he doesn’t care about anyone apart from himself, and also you’re an fool for considering in any other case.”
Final fall, he donated to the Kamala Harris marketing campaign, and voted for her within the election. An irony for him, after Trump’s reelection, is that he might be reliving his 2021 viral recognition—if he had been nonetheless prepared to alternate his model of actuality for Trump’s. “One widespread factor I at all times hear is, like, ‘Good for you for happening there and expressing your views,’” he instructed me. “Individuals who say that clearly don’t perceive what they’re saying.”
The frustration in his voice was audible. “If I settle for this pardon, if I conform to this pardon,” Riddle instructed me, “which means I disagree with that compelled intervention.” Reality has lastly collided with the president’s lies. Riddle could also be having fun with one final hit of consideration over his refusal of a pardon, however after the expertise this week of seeing the rebel’s ringleaders stroll free, unrepentant, he’s selecting a special path.