I Was Just an Ordinary Guy, Until I Stormed the Capitol
I was okay with being a convict, Jason Riddle told me this week, not long after learning that he was among the roughly 1,500 recipients of sweeping presidential pardons. Riddle, a 36-year-old New Hampshire resident, rejects the framing that he, along with other rioters, were unjustly persecuted and thus deserving of clemency.
“I’m not a patriot or a hero just because the guy who started the riot says it’s okay,” he said.
On Thursday, after consulting with his public defender, Riddle sent a pithy email to the Department of Justice: “To whom it may concern, I’d like to reject my pardon, Sincerely, Jason Riddle.”
Declining the pardon falls within Riddle’s legal rights. Many other January 6ers are holding out their hands for the president’s gift. “I can’t look myself in the mirror and do that,” Riddle said.
Riddle’s story sheds light on how someone without much direction suddenly found it in a day of rage and mayhem. For Riddle, the road to January 6 began after he graduated from high school, years before Trump’s first campaign. He served in the Navy and, according to his sentencing memo, was honorably released from active duty to the naval reserves in light of recurring struggles with alcohol use.
On campus, he recalls feeling surrounded by younger Bernie Sanders supporters, while he took a liking to Trump. In truth, he was becoming swept up in MAGA world. He described himself and another early Trump-supporting buddy as “obnoxious,” noting that they’d frequently drink in class.
Riddle’s radicalization can be a gradual process. He described himself as more of a libertarian than a MAGA Republican. In Trumpism, though, he found an always-there outlet for his pent-up dissatisfaction with how his life was unfolding.
As he plotted to cling to power by desperate means, the president and his allies were spreading conspiracy theories about alleged voter fraud, including lies about mail-in ballots. “So I’m, like, literally working at the mail, which is what I believed to be part of the problem with the election,” Riddle said.
In the weeks before the insurrection, he was drinking more heavily than ever. Sometimes, he’d stash additional booze in the mailbag he carried for the day’s rounds. One day, drunk on the job, he abruptly quit, leaving piles of mail in his truck.
Soon, he and two friends were driving from New Hampshire to Washington, D.C. One was a Trump supporter; the other, Riddle now thinks, was just along for the ride. Riddle’s own commitment to the “Stop the Steal” narrative involved some doublethink. “I know I’m wrong,” Riddle recalls telling himself. “Fuck it; I’m going down anyways.”
He recalls very clearly when he stepped over a barrier and marched into the Capitol. His friends stopped following him. “I remember actually seeing politicians from where I was standing,” he told me. “I could tell they were scared. I do remember enjoying that.”
Riddle’s story also raises an intriguing possibility: A person who stumbled into the darker corners of Trumpism can also stumble out.
Today, Riddle works at a restaurant in Concord, New Hampshire, and is thinking about looking for a job at a hospital or in mental health services. Sobriety has changed his political perspective, too. While he once viewed Trump as a bold truth teller, raw and unvarnished, he now sees the president as self-serving. When Trump called for public protests around the time of his indictments, Riddle felt especially played. “And I remember thinking, like, why would he do that? People died at the Capitol riot,” Riddle said. “That was the ‘duh’ moment I had with myself: Well, obviously because he doesn’t care about anybody other than himself, and you’re an idiot for thinking otherwise.”
Last fall, he donated to the Kamala Harris campaign and voted for her in the election. An irony for him, after Trump’s reelection, is that he could be reliving his 2021 viral popularity – if he were still willing to exchange his version of reality for Trump’s. “One common thing I always hear is, like, ‘Good for you for going down there and expressing your views,'” he told me. “People who say that obviously don’t understand what they’re saying.” The frustration in his voice was audible. “If I accept this pardon, if I agree to this pardon,” Riddle told me, “that means I disagree with that forced intervention.” Truth has finally collided with the president’s lies. Riddle may be enjoying one last hit of attention over his refusal of a pardon, but after the experience this week of seeing the insurrection’s ringleaders walk free, unrepentant, he is choosing a different path.
