A Jan. 6 Capitol rioter who U.S. President Donald Trump pardoned has been arrested on child molestation charges involving two minors, according to Florida police.
Authorities allege that Andrew Paul Johnson, 44, tried to use funds he was expecting to receive as part of a Jan. 6 payout to silence one of the alleged victims, an underage boy, with whom he is charged with sharing lewd and lascivious material and molesting a child under the age of 12.
In the other case, Johnson faces charges of lewd or lascivious behaviour to a child under the age of 16, transmitting harmful material to a minor, and lewd exhibition with a minor, according to a July 18 police report from the Hernando County Sheriff’s Office.
Johnson, who was among the roughly 1,500 people Trump pardoned this year in connection with the Jan. 6 riots, was arrested in Tennessee in August and extradited to Florida in connection with the child sex abuse allegations spanning over several months.
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In 2024, Johnson told one of the alleged victims — the son of his ex-girlfriend — that he was expecting to receive $10,000,000 as a result of being pardoned and promised to include the child in his will.
Trump has floated the idea of compensating pardoned Jan. 6 rioters, but no payments have been disbursed, according to NBC News.
The boy’s mother, who has not been publicly named, said she discovered inappropriate messages sent to her son by Johnson on Discord. She told police Johnson had sent pictures of girls at a pool to him and said he was going to receive oral sex from one of them.
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She asked her child about the messages, who then revealed to her that between April and October 2024, Johnson had molested him on three occasions, according to the police report.
The victim’s mother told investigators that her child said Johnson first molested him when he was 11 years old, when the pair was watching TV together.
She said her son was molested by Johnson a second time in a hotel room in Tarpon Springs. Fla.
The third time, she told police, occurred in similar circumstances to the first. This time, her son confronted Johnson, who, she says, apologized to him and told him never to tell anyone.
Johnson later sent the child an iPhone in the mail and told him to keep it a secret, the report says, and to delete everything if anyone found it.
The Sheriff’s office said in the affidavit that the Discord messages showed Johnson sneaking into the boy’s home to bring him food and spend time with him. Other Discord messages shown to both alleged victims included explicit videos of Johnson engaged in sex acts with other men, the report says.
In April 2024, he pleaded guilty and was pardoned.
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