All told, more than 1,500 people have been indicted or already prosecuted for the massive Capitol break-in. At least 17 were from Northern California.
WASHINGTON D.C. — There was the aquaponics farmer from Half Moon Bay, the Sacramento Republican Assembly president who talked online about “going to war,” and the yoga studio owner from Gilroy.
The Northern California residents were all named by federal prosecutors as people who joined the thousands of Capitol insurrectionists on Jan. 6, 2021, and now they’re all recipients of a pardon from President Donald Trump.
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All told, more than 1,500 people have been indicted or already prosecuted for the massive Capitol break-in, including more than 500 charged with violence against police. At least 17 were from Northern California. Many of those pardoned had already completed short jail sentences: Their criminal convictions will be expunged, and they will be released from any ongoing probation requirements.
Trump’s order also directs the attorney general to “pursue dismissal with prejudice … of all pending indictments against individuals for their conduct related to the events at or near the United States Capitol on January 6, 2021.”
Here’s a look at the Trump pardon recipients who called the Golden State home, in no particular order:
Evan Neumann is one of the few J6ers who never got his day in court. He left the country and was granted asylum in Belarus, but was still considered a wanted person by the FBI. The notice listing him as a fugitive had disappeared from the FBI’s website as of Tuesday morning.
Kenneth Armstrong III is an aquaponics farmer who started a vegetable farm in Half Moon Bay a decade ago. He was sentenced to a grand total of two weeks in jail for trespassing. He went from posting on social media about the “amazing day” to changing his mind, now viewing what happened on Jan. 6 as “dark,” his attorney wrote in court papers. When federal agents asked him for video from that day he provided it and said, “glad I could be of assistance.”
Mariposa Castro aka Imelda Acosta gained a “positive image” of Trump after he accidentally nearly hit her and her husband with a golf ball on the course at Pebble Beach in 2006, and went on to support his run for president, according to court records. She attended the Capitol demonstration out of curiosity and regrets going inside. A Gilroy yoga studio owner at the time of her arrest, she doesn’t eat meat and “espouses peace and love,” her lawyer said in court filings. But prosecutors pointed out that on a livestream that day, she said, “We showed them. We showed them all. Showed this one. War just started.” She got 45 days in jail.
Daniel Goodwyn, a self-described independent journalist who got a year of supervised release after his attorney argued that “as a person with autism he had no pieces to assemble while outside that signaled that he could not be” at the capitol. He was identified as a San Francisco tech worker and later used in fundraising efforts by Fox News host Tucker Carlson.
Daniel Shaw, a Santa Rosa resident in his late 50s, got a two-year probation term for entering the Capitol building with his teenaged son. A former operating engineer who was forced to stop working due to bone spurs and other injuries, Shaw later agreed to an FBI interview. There, prosecutors say he recounted that Jan. 6, “felt like how he imagined a religious revival would feel like.”
Sean Michael McHugh, a 34-year-old resident of Auburn who owned a construction and electrical company, was sentenced to 78 months in prison and $7,000 in fines and restitution for spraying police officers with bear spray and working with other rioters to push a metal sign into police. McHugh had been on probation at the time of Jan. 6 for a DUI and driving with a suspended license in Placer County.
Ricky Willden, a 39-year-old professed Proud Boy member from Oakhurst, was arrested in June 2021 and sentenced to two years in prison plus $2,000 restitution for assaulting or resisting police officers. Willden sprayed police with a chemical irritant while breaching the Capitol, and he later posted to Facebook saying, “I think they got the message from everyone of all ages.”
After Tommy Frederick Allan entered the Capitol on Jan. 6, he took a document from a desk, folded it and put it in his back pocket, then proceeded to take another stack of documents including a letter from Trump which he claimed were from the desk of Senator Mitch McConnell. He later destroyed the documents in the backyard of his home in Rocklin, Calif. Allan was arrested in January 2021 and was sentenced to 21 months in prison in December 2022.
When Jorge Riley, 43 of Sacramento, departed to Washington, D.C. ahead of Jan. 6, he served as the corresponding secretary of the California Republican Assembly and president of the Sacramento Republican Assembly. He bragged on Facebook a week before Jan. 6 about purchasing “ninja throwing knives” and said he would be “going for the war.” Riley posted photos of him and others entering the Capitol to Facebook in an album he called “Who’s House? OUR HOUSE.” Riley was sentenced to 18 months in prison and lost his positions in the Republican assemblies.
Brent Holdridge, a 55-year-old from Eureka, did not report to jail as ordered in December 2020 in Humboldt after being granted permission to visit his ailing mother in Louisiana. Instead, he traveled to the Capitol where he entered prohibited areas of the building. He was sentenced to 60 days in jail and had to pay $500 restitution.
This is a developing report. Check back for updates.