Trump pardons Sacramento-area protesters convicted in Jan. 6 US Capitol riots. Who are they?
Six Sacramento-area January 6 protesters charged for their actions during the 2021 storming of the U.S. Capitol were among the roughly 1,500 pardoned with the stroke of President Donald Trump’s pen Monday.
The signing fulfilled a Trump pledge during his presidential campaign to grant pardons to those charged in connection with the 2021 insurrection during a joint session of Congress to try to stop the certification of votes confirming Joe Biden as President of the United States.
The hundreds released include Stewart Rhodes of far-right group Oath Keepers and Enrique Tarrio of Proud Boys, among the ring leaders of the January 2021 violence connected to the deaths of at least nine Capitol Police officers in the days and weeks after the attack and hundreds more who were injured. Four people in the crowd died including one shot dead by police; and another believed trampled to death by other rioters.
Rhodes and Tarrio were convicted in 2023 of seditious conspiracy in the violent attack. Federal prosecutors said Rhodes’ Oath Keepers stockpiled weapons in preparation for the assault on the Capitol and he was sentenced to 18 years in federal prison. Tarrio was not in Washington, D.C., for the Capitol assault but was found guilty and sentenced to 22 years for organizing and directing a mob towards the Capitol.
Within the capital region, Jorge Riley, Tommy Allen, Sean McHugh, Valerie Ehrke, Kyle Colton and Dane Thompson, all received presidential pardons.
Riley, an Army veteran and a former corresponding secretary of the California Republican Assembly pleaded guilty in March 2023 to felony obstruction of an official proceeding. Riley was released from prison following a Supreme Court decision that narrowed the scope of a charge hundreds of January 6 defendants faced.
Supreme Court justices in 2023 ruled 6-3 that charge should only apply to destroying or attempting to destroy “records, documents, objects, or other things used in an official proceeding.” Attorneys for Riley maintained he never did that.
Tommy Frederick Allen, sentenced to 21 months in prison in December 2022 for his actions during the insurrection, was ordered to pay a $100 fine and $2,000 to the Architect of the U.S. Capitol after he scaled its walls on a rope and stole an American flag and documents from the Senate chamber. The Rocklin resident pleaded guilty in August 2022 to obstructing the vote tally certifying Biden as the 46th president.
The pardoned also included Sean McHugh of Auburn — who, federal prosecutors warned, had a remarkably long and disturbing criminal history, which lists arrests for violent offenses such as home invasions, burglary, domestic violence, destruction of property, and rape offenses.
Prosecutors also argued that McHugh has twice been found to be a danger to the community and was on probation at the time of his alleged offenses Jan. 6, 2021. Prosecutors alleged McHugh attacked Capitol Police officers with bear spray and beat them with a metal sign while leading rioters from behind a bullhorn.
Kyle Travis Colton, of Citrus Heights, was charged in Washington, D.C., in December 2023 with obstruction of law enforcement during civil disorder, entering or remaining in a restricted building without authority, disorderly conduct in a restricted building and on Capitol grounds and parading, demonstrating or picketing in a Capitol building, in connection with the assault on the Capitol.
Federal law enforcement agents say Colton was part of a second wave of protesters who forced their way into the U.S. Capitol on Jan. 6, 2021; prosecutors’ charging documents alleged the Citrus Heights man grabbed a rioter’s flagpole and used it to assault a Capitol officer before giving the makeshift weapon to another rioter.
Valerie Ehrke, an Arbuckle home designer, pleaded guilty in June to a misdemeanor count connected to her actions that day.
Dane Thompson, a school board candidate from Granite Bay accused of assaulting a Capitol Police officer during the rioting, was arraigned in November in Sacramento federal court on suspicion of numerous felony and misdemeanor counts connected to the Capitol riots including assaulting, resisting or impeding certain officers and civil disorder, plus five misdemeanor offenses.
Thompson recently ran an unsuccessful campaign for the Eureka Union School District board of trustees in Placer County.
This story was originally published January 21, 2025 at 12:10 PM.
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