A pardoned January 6 rioter has been charged with sex crimes against two children. Andrew Paul Johnson was arraigned in a Florida court in October on multiple charges, including molesting a child as young as 11 years old, joining a growing list of U.S. Capitol rioters pardoned by President Donald Trump who now face new legal trouble.

Johnson dangled the prospect that one of the children could receive money because, Johnson claimed, he was entitled to $10 million as part of reparations for his January 6 arrest, according to a police report from a Hernando County Sheriff’s Department detective.

Those convicted and later pardoned for involvement in the January 6 riot have not been rewarded any reparations, though Trump and January 6 rioters have floated the idea of a compensation fund.

Johnson said he would put the victim in his will to receive any of the money left after his death. Police believed this was done to keep the child from “exposing what Andrew had done,” according to the arrest report, which was filed in court.

]Police believe Johnson offered to put the alleged victim in his will to keep the child quiet.

Johnson faces two criminal cases in county court, one for each child. In one case, he has been charged with lewd or lascivious molestation of a child under the age of 12. In the other case, he faces a charge of lewd or lascivious behavior to a child under the age of 16, transmitting harmful information to minors, and exhibition with a victim under the age of 16.

Johnson has pleaded not guilty and his trials sare set to start early next year. (Johnson’s attorney did not respond to a request for comment.)

Though some records, like the redacted arrest affidavits, are public, the indictments and other court filings in Hernando County are not available to the public. Florida law allows authorities to withhold information from public records that would identify victims of child sex crimes.

Two police arrest reports detail Johnson’s alleged crimes, which range from sexual contact with the genitals of an 11-year-old to asking a minor for sex. Johnson’s victims, according to a pair of arrest affidavits, were the child of his now ex-girlfriend and a friend of the first child.

On August 26, eight days after an arrest warrant was issued for the child sex crimes charges, Johnson was arrested in a suburb of Nashville, Tennessee, according to local media there, which noted his January 6 pardon, and set for extradition to Florida.

Johnson was among the 1,500 people charged in connection with the riots on January 6, 2021, in which supporters of Donald Trump stormed the Capitol in Washington in an attempt to overthrow the president’s election loss to Joe Biden. According to an FBI affidavit, authorities found probable cause to charge Johnson for entering the Capitol illegally and trying to interfere with Congress’s certification of Biden’s victory. An FBI affidavit includes photos of Johnson climbing into the building through a broken window.

Johnson, 44, represented himself in court and pleaded guilty in the spring of 2024 to charges of violently entering the Capitol and disorderly conduct, though he unsuccessfully attempted to take back his plea months later.

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In January 2025, after Trump took office for his second term, he pardoned Johnson, who had been charged with violently entering a restricted building, disorderly conduct, and demonstrating inside the Capitol. (The White House did not respond to a request for comment.)

In the 2025 affidavit that details the alleged sex crimes against the younger child, Johnson’s ex-girlfriend told police that she found out he was using Discord to send her child photos of girls. Johnson included sexual comments with the photos. According to the affidavit, she told police she asked the child if Johnson had ever been inappropriate in person, and the child responded that Johnson had molested them three times over a six-month period in 2024.

The abuse started when the child was 11 years old, the child told the mother, according to the affidavit, when Johnson was still living with the family. The police document says the minor described two incidents of falling asleep in the living room and awaking to Johnson touching the child’s genitals.

Another incident, according to the affidavit, occurred in a hotel, with no further detail given. The child told Johnson they knew this was wrong. Johnson apologized, the police document said, and asked the child to not tell anyone, so that he would not get in trouble.

After the third instance, Johnson mailed the child an iPhone 7, which he said to keep a secret. Johnson then used Discord to communicate with the child, without their mother’s knowledge. Photographs on the phone showed Johnson sneaking into the home to spend time with the child, according to the arrest affidavit.

Both children said Johnson showed them lewd photographs and videos of himself, according to both arrest affidavits, and exposed himself to them in person.

The second child, who is under the age of 16, told police Johnson made comments that led them to believe he was a “pedophile,” according to an arrest affidavit in that case, where Johnson was charged with lewd or lascivious behavior.

Johnson, according to the second affidavit, also encouraged children to have sex in his van.

Pardoned Jan. 6 Rioters

Many of those charged in January 6 cases, especially those who went to jail or prison, have formed a loose-knit community that socializes and fights with each other, both online and offline. Johnson has been a fixture within the January 6 online community.

He regularly led Spaces, conversations on X (formerly Twitter), that would sometimes last over nine hours. On both X and his YouTube channel, Johnson positioned himself as a person who exposed perceived bad actors among the January 6 rioters, namely those who, he argued, were federal agents or provocateurs sent to make the Trump supporters at the Capitol that day look bad.

Johnson has been a fixture within the January 6 online community.

Many rioters have spent time defending themselves against Johnson’s allegation or joining him in casting blame on others. Earlier this year, Johnson said he traveled from Florida to Pennsylvania to attend the funeral of fellow January 6 rioter Bart Shively, staying in an Airbnb organized by Jake Lang, a white nationalist rioter who is now running for Congress in Florida.

The right-wing outlet Gateway Pundit ran a story about Johnson in June 2024, ahead of his sentencing, referring to him as a “single father” who was “on the brink of homelessness.”

The Gateway Pundit story, which uncritically offers Johnson’s version of the events of January 6 — including his conspiracy theories about agents provocateurs — encouraged readers to donate money to the defendant. The article was based on an interview of Johnson by Jenn Baker of CondemnedUSA, an organization that raised money for January 6 participants. (“I have had no contact with him since just after his pardon for J6,” Baker told The Intercept. “I’m completely disgusted and horrified at these charges and if he is proven to be guilty I support any punishment he receives.”)

Baker has recently been added to the Pentagon Press Corps for Gateway Pundit. Earlier this year, Baker wrote a sympathetic Gateway Pundit profile of Dillon Herrington, a January 6 defendant who is currently in jail while awaiting trial on a 2023 charge of first-degree rape.

Johnson joins a short list of pardoned rioters who have been convicted or charged with sexual crimes against children, in most cases for conduct before the January 6 riot.

Like Johnson, David Daniel was accused with a child sex crime allegedly committed after the January 6 riot; he was charged in April 2024 of possessing and production of child sexual abuse materials after the FBI raided his home in relation to the riot investigation. In deliberations, Daniel argued that because the raid and search were related to January 6, the evidence was inadmissible. So far, Daniel has not been successful in getting his charges dropped, and his case is ongoing.

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In two other cases, Trump issued second pardons to other January 6 defendants who were charged with crimes related to investigations of their roles in the riots; neither was charged with sex crimes.

One defendant was pardoned this month for an illegal gun charge that arose from a search of his home during the investigation into January 6 related crimes. The second pardon came after courts rejected the man’s attempt to have the charge vacated because of the original pardon.

In another case, Trump this month pardoned another rioter who made online threats to shoot police officers after they sought to question her about January 6.

The post Pardoned Capitol Rioter Tried to Hush Child Sex Victim With Promise of Jan. 6 Reparation Money, Police Say appeared first on The Intercept.

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