BOISE, ID — Pamela Hemphill, 71, known as the “MAGA Granny” in news headlines, openly rejected Trump’s pardon, according to the New York Times last week, quoting Hemphill doubling down stating, “Absolutely not.”
However, according to NY Times and other experts in the legal field, “rejecting” a pardon isn’t a simple matter nor is it clear if it’s legally “allowed.”
“Many of those convicted of storming the U.S. Capitol on Jan. 6, 2021, have celebrated the pardons or commutations that they received this week from President Trump,” wrote the NY Times, highlighting Hemphill’s decision as an unusual phenomenon.
In an interview on Jan. 21, the NY Times reported Hemphill explaining her rationale to The Idaho Statesman, “It’s an insult to the Capitol Police, to the rule of law and to the nation.”
According to The Idaho Statesman, Hemphill was involved in gathering for the “Stop the Steal” rally after Joe Biden won the 2020 presidential election.
The Idaho Statesman previously reported she said that “she began talking to a group of Proud Boys, eventually following them to the Capitol and becoming part of the crowd that forced its way through barricaded doors, attacked Capitol Police, broke windows and doors, forced lawmakers to flee and ransacked offices.”
“During the riot, Hemphill streamed much of what she was experiencing and posted videos to YouTube,” The Idaho Statesman stated.
In Jan. 2022, Hemphill pleaded guilty “to a misdemeanor offense for entering the Capitol during the riot and was sentenced to 60 days in prison and three years of probation,” reported NY Times.
According to The Idaho Statesman, Hemphill recalled the law enforcement officers with the U.S. Capitol Police and Metropolitan Police Department were the ones who protected her that day, according to her interview.
“(The rioters) stepped on me, threw me down, cut my knee, broke my glasses, stepped on my head, pulled out my shoulder,” Hemphill recalled from the Jan. 21 interview. “The officers pulled me up and put me behind them.”
The Idaho Statesman summarized Hemphill ended up “struggling to breathe and in a lot of pain,” especially around her recent stitches.
“I really probably should have been sent to the hospital,” Hemphill admitted to The Idaho Statesman. “Again, I should have left. But, no, Pam’s got to stay there and videotape.”
Hemphill noticed the “lack of respect shown to police officers,” playing “a significant role in changing her opinions about Trump and the whole event,” The Idaho Statesman wrote.
“The pardon is a slap in their face,” Hemphill said. “It’s like the country let them down. They were the heroes that day.”
Third-party legal experts weighed in on the subject of Hemphill’s rejection of the pardon.
“It would be a novel act to file a court case to reject a pardon of a misdemeanor, in part because of the low stakes,” Mark Osler, a professor at the University of St. Thomas School of Law in Minneapolis, said in an interview with NY Times.
However, NY Times expressed doubt on the success of Hemphill’s rejection of the pardon and that “any request could face such an uphill battle.”
NY Times cited a legal precedent from Dec. 2024, in which two federal prisoners whose death sentences were commuted last year by President Biden asked a judge to block the reduction in their sentences; the prisoners argued that it could jeopardize their appeals.
Judge James R. Sweeney II of U.S. District Court for the Southern District of Indiana dismissed the prisoners’ requests last week , ruling the “prisoners could not reject their commutations, even if they did not ask for them or want them,” citing the 1927 U.S. Supreme Court ruling, according to NY Times.
In the 1927 ruling, the prisoner had argued that the “commutation had been issued without his consent,” but according to the ruling, the president did not need the “prisoner’s consent” for the commutation to take effect.
Justice Oliver Wendell Holmes, Jr., wrote in the 1927 decision: “Just as the original punishment would be imposed without regard to the prisoner’s consent and in the teeth of his will, whether he liked it or not, the public welfare, not his consent, determines what shall be done.”
After referring to the 1927 legal precedent, Judge Sweeney wrote that the decision, although nearly a century old, “remains good law,” according to NY Times.
Despite the uphill battle, Hemphill insists on her newfound conviction in her public statement.
“If I accept a pardon, I’m continuing their propaganda, their gaslighting and all their falsehoods they’re putting out there about Jan. 6,” she stated in the interview to The Idaho Statesman.
“They started talking about supporting people that had actually been violent, and I wasn’t happy about that,” Hemphill continued. “I thought we were going to stand up for anything that was government overreach or something like that, not people that are in jail for harming officers.”
“We are not victims, we were volunteers,” Hemphill emphasized. “Nobody went up to them with a gun to their head and said, ‘You’re going to go break a window. You’re going to go destroy property. You’re going to push an officer.’ They had a choice.”
