A Panorama City man who used an electroshock weapon on a police officer, a Santa Ana man who unleashed pepper spray at retreating officers and a former Orange County police chief who transported weapons across the country before joining a mob that marched on Congress are among the more than two dozen people with Southern California ties who appear to have received clemency through President Donald Trump’s sweeping pardons of Jan. 6 defendants.
After months of speculation about how many Jan. 6 defendants would receive pardons, Trump — who has painted the defendants as “hostages” or “political prisoners” — announced hours after being sworn into office that everyone charged in connection with the Capitol riot would receive clemency.
“This is Jan. 6, and these are the hostages, approximately 1500 for a pardon, full pardon,” Trump told reporters as he signed the executive order on Monday. Trump said the pardons would end “a grave national injustice that has been perpetrated upon the American people over the last four years.”
The pardons bring an abrupt end to the largest investigation in United States Justice Department history, following an attack that left more than 100 police officers injured by an angry mob of Trump supporters that included people armed with poles, bats and bear spray.
The majority of Jan. 6 defendants — including those with Southern California ties — were charged with or admitted to low-level federal charges that essentially amounted to trespassing in restricted areas on the capital grounds. Many of those defendants have told judges that they got caught up in the crowd. Most of them were generally sentenced to either community service or a short amount of time behind bars and were already released from lockup.
Simone Gold — a doctor formerly based in Beverly Hills who founded the anti-vaccine group America’s Frontline Doctor and served a 60 day jail sentence for entering and remaining in a restricted building on Jan. 6 — was among those who publicly thanked Trump for her pardon, writing in a statement posted on Instagram for “correcting this historical wrong so that I can continue the work of helping people.”
Others who served their sentences and have now been exonerated by the pardons include John Strand, a model and actor who joined Gold at the Capitol; Christian Alexander Secor, a Costa Mesa man who sat in former Vice President Mike Pence’s vacated seat; Michael Aaron Carico, an actor who filmed himself explicitly cursing out then-House Speaker Nancy Pelosi during the riot; and Philip Kramer, a Yorba Linda man who stole a “Do Not Enter” sign from the Capitol during the insurrection.
But a significant number of the Jan. 6 defendants were convicted of far more serious crimes, including attacking officers, conspiring to take part in a riot or organizing their far-right followers in an attempt to stop the transfer of presidential power by aiming the mob at lawmakers.
The most high-profile Southern California Jan. 6 defendant was Alan Hostetter, a former La Habra police chief-turned yoga instructor and conservative Orange County activist. Hostetter drew attention for his public opposition to state restrictions in the midst of the pandemic, before turning his attention to election conspiracies raised by Trump following former President Joe Biden’s electoral victory in 2020.
While Hostetter was not accused of taking part in any direct violence, prosecutors allege that helped transport weapons to Washington D.C. and joined a group of rioters while armed with a hatchet. The former police chief, prosecutors alleged, was “eager to stoke the fires of the revolution.” He was sentenced last year to an 11 year, 3 month federal prison sentence.
Other high-profile Southern California Jan. 6 defendants had more violent roles in the riot.
Whether those defendants would also be pardoned was an open question until Trump’s announcement on Monday.
In a Fox News Sunday interview a little more than a week prior, Vice President JD Vance when questioned about potential pardons for Jan. 6 defendants said those who “protested peacefully” should be pardoned but that “if you committed violence on that day, obviously you shouldn’t be pardoned,” later adding that there was a “bit of a gray area” in some cases.
And Pam Bondi, Trump’s pick for attorney general, in a confirmation hearing last week also suggested that pardons would be limited to those who didn’t attack law enforcement, saying “I’m not going to speak for the president, but the president does not like people who abuse police officers, either.”
It is clear that under the newly announced pardons, those accused of attacking officers on Jan. 6 will see their time behind bars cut short.
Daniel Joseph Rodriguez, a Panorama City resident, was sentenced to more than 12 years in prison for using an electroshock weapon on then-Metropolitan Police Officer Michael Fanone — in the midst of the riot. Federal prosecutors described Rodriguez as “one of the most violent” of the Jan. 6 defendants, while a federal judge called him a “one-man army of hate, attacking police and destroying property (and showing) up in D.C. spoiling for a fight.
“I have been betrayed by my country,” Fanone said of the pardons of his attackers during an interview with CNN host Anderson Cooper on Monday. “Rest assured, I have been betrayed by my country and I have been betrayed by those who supported Donald Trump. Whether you voted for him because he supported these pardons, or for some other reason, you knew this was coming, and here we are.”
Jeffrey Scott Brown, a Santa Ana resident, was convicted of spraying pepper spray at officers who were retreating from a crowd of rioters following a standoff within a tunnel on the Capitol grounds. Brown — who was sentenced to more than four years in prison — took a canister from another person, made his way to the front of a line of protesters and sprayed an orange liquid above the heads of a line of officers.
For at least some of the Jan. 6 defendants who were still serving time behind bars, their release came immediately after the pardons were announced.
Derek Kinnison, a Lake Elsinore man who was convicted alongside three other men of conspiracy and obstruction of an official proceeding among other charges and sentenced last year to two years and 9 months in prison, was “very happy and grateful” to be exonerated by the newly-elected president of wrongdoing and reunited with his family, his defense attorney, Nicolai Cocis said.
Like many of the Jan. 6 defendants, Kinnison was drawn to politics during the pandemic lockdowns. His attorney said Kinnison “saw the hypocrisy and overreach by the state in deeming places of worship and small businesses as inessential while Hollywood and the Walmarts of the world were able to continue with their business as usual.”
Cocis acknowledged that Kinnison and other members of the Three Percenters militia movement brought guns, pepper spray and ballistic vests to Washington D.C. But the defense attorney said the guns were for self-defense against potential counterprotesters and were left in their hotel room. Kinnison, his attorney said, has had time to “reflect and look back at how that could be perceived by others who did not know him.”
“He has a strong moral compass,” Cocis said. “He felt he did not commit any crime and he did not bend his knee to the government and bow to them. We took his case to trial. We were disappointed by the jury verdict. But ultimately justice was served. He was exonerated of any wrongdoing (by the pardon).”
Cocis said anybody who watched video footage taken at the Capitol on Jan. 6 would likely “agree that there was a small percentage of protesters who committed crimes.”
“I would say 90 percent of the others were swept up into a politically driven prosecution, and Derrick was part of the 90 percent who shouldn’t have been prosecuted,” Cocis added
Democratic leaders in Congress have argued that the events of Jan. 6 were not the result of a crowd that simply grew out of control, but instead the culmination of a months-long effort by Trump to remain in power despite losing the 2020 election.
In one of his last official acts, former President Joe Biden early Monday pardoned members of the House committee that investigated the Jan. 6 attack — including Sen. Adam Schiff, D-Calif. and Rep. Pete Aguilar, D-San Bernardino — in an attempt to shield them from becoming targets during Trump’s second presidential administration.