The January 6er Who Left Trumpism

“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. Some Americans, including President Donald Trump, believe that Riddle and others who rioted at the Capitol on January 6, 2021, were 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 just because the guy who started the riot says it’s okay,” he told me.

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 please.

Sincerely,
Jason Riddle

Sent from my iPhone

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. Rather than whitewash his unsavory past, he feels called to own his behavior, even his most shameful moments—a tenet of Alcoholics Anonymous, which he says has saved him.

Some insurrectionists stormed the Capitol as true ideological warriors. Enrique Tarrio, a former leader of the Proud Boys, and Stewart Rhodes, founder of the Oath Keepers, for example, were convicted of seditious conspiracy against the United States (and both men are now free). But many others who participated in the violence and destruction that day were similar to Riddle—people with ordinary lives and ordinary problems who found community and catharsis in the MAGA movement.

None of the above is an excuse for taking part in one of the ugliest moments in American history. But actively planning to carry out violence is arguably different from getting swept up in a mob. Today, Riddle doesn’t shirk his complicity. But the path that led him to the Capitol sheds light on how someone without much direction suddenly found it in a day of rage and mayhem. His story also raises an intriguing possibility: A person who stumbled into the darker corners of Trumpism can also stumble out.

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 reocurring [sic] struggles with alcohol use.” In college, at Southern Connecticut State University, as an older student, he decided to major in political science. On campus, he recalls feeling surrounded by younger Bernie Sanders supporters, while he took a liking to Trump. He described himself and another early Trump-supporting buddy as “obnoxious,” noting that they’d frequently drink in class. During Trump’s first presidential campaign, Riddle drove to rallies all over the country. At first he told himself that, as a poli-sci major, he was making anthropological field trips. In truth, he was becoming swept up in MAGA world.

He liked the excitement and controversy that surrounded Trump. “There was this aggression. I think I really enjoyed it,” he said. He’d pregame before the rallies, then join the crowds listening to the future president rant. “You go, you know, bond with these strangers,” he said. At that time in his life, Riddle remembers having barely any other interests or hobbies. He didn’t watch sports or exercise. He’d sit at home, drinking and trolling. “I spent all my time in those comments [sections] on social media, arguing with strangers,” Riddle said. “It was all about proving someone wrong. That would make me feel good about myself.”

After college, he struggled to hold down a job. Eventually, he found work as a mail carrier for the Postal Service. On his route, he’d ruminate. He’d carry on long conversations with a drinking buddy. “I would just be on the phone with my Bluetooth in, talking to another maniac who thinks like me, while just slowly going crazy,” Riddle said.

Radicalization can be a gradual process. He described himself as more of a libertarian than a MAGA Republican. In Trumpism, though, Riddle found an always-there outlet for his pent-up dissatisfaction with how his life was unfolding. But Trump’s time in office was running out. 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 told me, 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.”

Images of some of the other Capitol invaders soon spread on social media: the Viking-helmeted QAnon Shaman, the man with his feet up on Nancy Pelosi’s desk, the guy carrying the speaker’s lectern. Riddle, too, achieved a kind of immortality: He was the insurrectionist hoisting a bottle of wine. In the immediate aftermath of the event, Riddle felt no remorse, or shame, or need to hide. He bragged about his exploits on a local newscast, and briefly enjoyed his newfound virality. He soon received a visit from the FBI.

In addition to pilfering booze from the Senate parliamentarian’s office, Riddle had stolen a leather-bound book labeled Senate Procedure, and quickly hawked it to a fellow rioter for $40. On April 4, 2022, at federal court in Washington, he was sentenced to 90 days in prison. “Three months for trying to stop the steal, one sip of wine at a time?” Riddle bragged to a New Hampshire newspaper. “Totally worth it.”

Even in prison, he still had his fame—or infamy. He remembers a correctional officer muttering “Let’s go, Brandon” to him on his first day, he told me, and that his fellow inmates nicknamed him “Trump.” But unlike some January 6ers, Riddle wasn’t further radicalized in prison, where he spent the summer of 2022. But neither did his conviction immediately lead him to repudiate the cause that had taken him to the Capitol. Riddle talked about running for Congress, leveraging what remained of his fleeting celebrity. He once filed paperwork, but never got any campaign off the ground.

Riddle thought he’d be able to manage his drinking after his release. But he struggled, and soon began attending daily Alcoholics Anonymous meetings. He has relapsed a few times, but thanks largely to what he calls the “forced intervention” of his encounter with the criminal-justice system, he’s been living his “new life” for a little more than two years. Although sobriety remains a daily project, he feels he has finally gained insight into the reckless and self-destructive behavior that led him to the January 6 insurrection.

These days, he’s working at a restaurant in Concord, New Hampshire. He told me he feels comfortable in chaotic environments, and he’s thinking about looking for a job at a hospital or in mental-health services. Sobriety has changed his political perspective, too. Whereas 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.