Pardoned Jan. 6 Rioter Gets Life Sentence for Child Molestation in Hernando County

Andrew Paul Johnson promised one of his young victims millions of dollars he expected to receive from the Trump administration for being a pardoned January 6 defendant. It was, according to the Hernando County Sheriff's Office, a calculated attempt to buy silence. On Thursday, a Florida judge sentenced the 45-year-old handyman to life in prison instead.

County Circuit Judge Stephen Toner handed down the sentence after a Hernando County jury convicted Johnson of multiple charges including lewd or lascivious molestation of a child and electronically transmitting material harmful to a minor. NPR and NBC News report the jury returned guilty findings on five criminal charges total, including the molestation of one child under 12 and another under 16. Prosecutors from the Fifth Judicial Circuit's state attorney's office confirmed the conviction.

Johnson had been among the more than 1,500 people charged in the January 6, 2021 attack on the U.S. Capitol whom President Donald Trump pardoned, commuted, or had cases dismissed on his first day back in the White House. That clemency freed Johnson from a federal prison sentence. Within months, according to investigators, he was abusing children in Hernando County.

One victim told investigators the abuse began around April 2024, several months before Johnson had even been sentenced in the Capitol riot case. Hernando County Sheriff's deputies opened their investigation into the molestation allegations in July 2025, and Johnson was arrested in August of that year.

The sheriff's office affidavit detailed how Johnson used Discord messages to sneak to a child's home, bringing food and spending time with him. To keep his victims from coming forward, Johnson told one child he expected to be compensated for his pardon and would put the child in his will to inherit any leftover restitution money.

"He said not to tell anybody," one victim testified at trial.

Both children told the court they had been too afraid to tell any adults what they had endured. The sheriff's office report noted that the promise of inheritance money "was believed to be used to keep [the child] from exposing what Andrew had done."

Johnson's case is part of a documented pattern among pardoned January 6 defendants. NPR has reported that dozens of former Capitol rioters have faced new criminal charges since receiving clemency. Among them is Christopher P. Moynihan, 35, who pleaded guilty to a harassment charge after allegedly threatening to kill House Minority Leader Hakeem Jeffries.

Johnson now faces the rest of his life in a Florida prison, the restitution windfall he dangled before his victims never having materialized.