An older woman who participated in the 2021 violence at the Capitol and has served a stint in jail connected to her actions recently called on Twitter for former President Donald Trump to not use her story to try and create some kind of narrative about supposed mistreatment of January 6 participants.
The woman’s name is Pam Hemphill, and right-wing media sources have gotten a lot of mileage out of comparing the length of time in jail that she received to, for instance, the punishments facing the president’s son Hunter Biden after his supposed crimes. Hemphill pleaded guilty to a misdemeanor trespassing charge and was sentenced to 60 days. She had posted online in support of joining what became the Capitol mob, where many police officers were brutalized and where the lives of members of Congress, staff members, journalists, and others were put in danger.
“Please @realDonaldTrump don’t be using me for anything, I’m not a victim of Jan6, I pleaded guilty because I was guilty! #StopTheSpin,” Hemphill said on Twitter alongside a screenshot of commentary from the former president where he’d called the details of her case “horrible.” Unfortunately, some of the top comments on Hemphill’s post feature Trump supporters accusing her of potentially even being bought. “Bold statement to call someone a liar without knowing facts!” Hemphill replied to one commenter.
And in case there’d be any doubt that the account in question really belonged to Hemphill, she spoke with HuffPost and told the same story. Hemphill compared that to which she’d been exposed with Trump to familiarly abusive psychological tactics. “I was back and forth. Struggling with it, because it’s a struggle trying to get away from gaslighting, Trump’s narcissism and all the tactics they use,” she told the publication. She also disputed, both on Twitter and in her conversations with HuffPost, the idea that participants in the Capitol riot have been treated with any particularly substantial level of unfairness. That also upends the narrative from Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene (R-Ga.). Check out more here.
