Just months after President Trump's mass pardons for Jan. 6 rioters freed him from prison, a Florida man repeatedly sexually abused two middle-school aged children.
On Thursday, the man, Andrew Paul Johnson, was sentenced to life in prison, after a Florida jury found him guilty of five criminal charges, including molestation, lewd and lascivious exhibition and transmission of material harmful to a minor.
Police reported that Johnson, 45, tried to keep the children quiet by telling them he would share millions of dollars in restitution money he expected to receive from the Trump administration in connection with his Jan. 6 case.
"He said not to tell anybody," one of Johnson's victims testified.
Both children later testified that they were too afraid to tell any adults about what they had endured, according to trial records obtained by NPR.
"We were scared," Johnson's other victim testified. "Like, we didn't realize that this stuff was not okay because we were 12 years old."
NPR does not name victims of sexual abuse and is also withholding the names of their parents to protect their privacy.
Johnson is one of several pardoned Capitol riot defendants who have been arrested for new crimes since receiving clemency for their actions during the 2021 insurrection. Opponents of Trump's mass pardons say the president's actions have instilled a sense of impunity among members of the mob who stormed the Capitol.
"They think they're untouchable," said Congressman Jamie Raskin, a Maryland Democrat who served on the House select committee that investigated the Jan. 6 attack. Trump's pardons, Raskin told NPR, "definitely have made Americans less safe."
In just the last week, two former Jan. 6 defendants were arrested in the Washington, D.C. area.
Jake Lang, who was charged with assaulting police with a baseball bat during the riot, was arrested for allegedly threatening a police officer who had also previously protected the Capitol.
"Public execution is the only solution for animals like you," Lang told the officer at a rally for the fifth anniversary of the attack, according to prosecutors and video of the scene. Lang has pleaded not guilty.
Lang also appeared in court this week in St. Paul, Minn., on a felony charge of damaging property after posting a video of himself knocking down an ice sculpture put up by protesters opposing the federal government's immigration crackdown.
Meanwhile, Bryan Betancur, who already has a lengthy criminal record, was also arrested this week on charges of assault and battery. At the time of the Capitol riot, Betancur was on probation and wearing a court-mandated GPS monitor for a prior burglary conviction. His latest arrest took place after videos emerged that appeared to show him touching women's hair while riding the D.C. Metro. Multiple women have accused Betancur of stalking them and making harassing comments online.
The White House did not respond to NPR's request for comment.
Last year, after another pardoned Jan. 6 rioter was charged with threatening to kill House Minority Leader Hakeem Jeffries (D-NY), Trump was asked if his pardons undermined his tough-on-crime policies.
"No, you have thousands of people that we're dealing with, and, you know, if one goes haywire," Trump said, before pivoting to criticize Democrats.
As part of the administration's push to rewrite the history of the attack, which injured approximately 140 police officers, an official White House website describes all of the Jan. 6 defendants as "patriotic Americans prosecuted for their presence at the Capitol." Trump himself has referred to the rioters as "great people."
'He said not to tell anybody'
Both of Johnson's young victims — a young boy and a young girl — testified at his trial, where they described how Johnson used his role as a trusted "father figure" to subject them to physical sexual abuse and explicit messages.
Johnson first came into the picture in 2023, after the boy's mother met Johnson at a political rally. The mother, who was raising two boys alone, let Johnson stay on the couch in her home.
She testified that she believed Johnson, who worked as a handyman, could help fix things around the house.
By that point, Johnson had already been charged for his role in the Capitol attack, but his case was still working its way through the courts. On the political right, riot defendants like Johnson were widely portrayed as victims, "hostages" and "political prisoners."
One night, the boy was watching "a scary movie" with Johnson, when he fell asleep.
"I woke up in the morning and he was touching me — I felt him touching me in my private area," the boy testified. He was 11 years old at the time.
"Did you say anything to him?" Assistant State Attorney Kasey Whitson asked.
"No ma'am," the boy replied. "I was too nervous, like, I was scared."
Later that year, the boy again woke up to Johnson touching him. This time, Johnson swore him to silence.
"He said not to tell anybody," the boy said. His mother remained unaware of the abuse.
In April 2024, Johnson returned to federal court in Washington, D.C., where he pleaded guilty to multiple nonviolent charges for breaching the Capitol. Later that August, he was sentenced to one year in prison followed by a year of supervised release.
In Jan. 2025, just a few months after Johnson began serving his sentence, Trump took office and pardoned virtually every Jan. 6 defendant, including Johnson.
"Free! At last!" Johnson posted on X. "Thank you @realDonaldTrump!"
'We were scared'
Soon after his release, Johnson started posting online that he expected to receive restitution money from the Trump administration.
He also re-entered the lives of the boy and his mother. The sexual abuse resumed, as well. The boy testified that Johnson used the online gaming system Roblox and the messaging platform Discord to send him messages, some of which were sexual.
Johnson invited both the boy, and the boy's best friend — a 12-year-old girl — to play paintball and visit a trampoline park and hotel swimming pools.
Both children testified that Johnson exposed himself to them on multiple occasions, made explicit sexual comments and also sexually abused the girl.
"We were scared," the girl testified. "Like, we didn't realize that this stuff was not okay because we were 12 years old."
Around this time, the boy's mother began sensing something off in her son's behavior.
"She had a gut feeling that something was wrong," the boy testified. "My attitude changed when I was around her and I wouldn't hang out with her anymore."
In July 2025, the boy's mother confronted both children after discovering concerning messages from Johnson on the boy's Discord account.
"She asked us, like, did he do anything?" the girl testified. "We were kind of reluctant at first because we were scared to admit it. But then she kept asking and I told [the boy] 'we have to tell her.'"
Soon after, the mother called the police.
On Aug. 26, 2025 — just seven months after Johnson received a full presidential pardon — law enforcement located him in Tennessee and he was back in police custody.
'Reparations' for Jan. 6 defendants?
The child sexual abuse case against Andrew Paul Johnson has further highlighted a controversial proposal to use taxpayer funds to compensate former riot defendants.
Ed Martin, the U.S. pardon attorney, and Jonathan Gross, an official at the Justice Department's Civil Rights Division, are among those who have promoted the idea of financial restitution for Jan. 6 rioters.
"I am for when somebody gets wronged and destroyed by their government that they be taken care of, that they try to make them whole in so far as they can," Martin told right-wing commentator Tucker Carlson last year. "That's only fair."
"There has to be compensation," Gross said on a podcast in Dec. 2024. "People's lives have been destroyed. And the way they can do that is they can just let everybody file a lawsuit and settle the lawsuits."
The Department of Justice did not respond to NPR's request for comment.
In June 2025, the Justice Department announced that it would pay nearly five million dollars to settle a wrongful death lawsuit brought by the family of Ashli Babbitt, a rioter who was shot and killed by police while trying to breach an area just off the floor of the U.S. House of Representatives.
Under the Biden administration, the Department of Justice had cleared the officer who shot Babbitt of wrongdoing.
A group of House Democrats have introduced a bill to prevent any payouts to former Jan. 6 defendants. The bill, which is not supported by House Republican leadership, has no path to become law unless reintroduced in a future Congress.
The proposal would "prohibit the use of federal funds to compensate individuals who were prosecuted for their involvement in the attack on the United States Capitol."
"The pardoned Jan. 6 insurrectionists and rioters believe that they are entitled to millions of dollars from the federal government," said Raskin, a co-sponsor of the bill, "as Donald Trump continues to flatter them, that they are somehow the victims rather than the perpetrators of crime."
Raskin argued that Johnson's case demonstrates the damage done by Trump's pardons.
"It was only because Donald Trump let him out of prison that he was able to go and to continue his sickening pattern of child sexual abuse," Raskin said. "What is the president's response to that? Does he take responsibility for what's happened?"
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