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.