A Florida man pardoned by President Trump after storming the U.S. Capitol in 2021 has been convicted of sex crimes involving two children.
Andrew Paul Johnson, a 45-year-old handyman, was found guilty on Tuesday of five charges, including the molestation of one victim under the age of 12 and another under 16, Hernando County prosecutors announced on Wednesday.
He was also convicted of lewd and lascivious exhibition and electronically transmitting material harmful to a minor.
Johnson faces a 25-year minimum sentence, but could spend the rest of his life behind bars.
Johnson was arrested last August after police began investigating reports that he’d inappropriately touched two minor victims. One, who said the abuse began in 2024 when he was 11 years old, showed investigators a cellphone given to him by Johnson so that they could communicate in secret.
Prosecutors said authorities also found evidence of sexually explicit messaging on one of the victims’ computers. Johnson was said to have encouraged that child to take measures to hide the inappropriate content.
During an interview with law enforcement and child advocacy specialists, the first victim reportedly recounted “specific details of events as well as various locations where these acts occurred.”
The other victim was said to have been present during some of those illegal encounters, according to prosecutors. They corroborated statements made by the first victim and disclosed several instances of being inappropriately touched themself.
Johnson was accused of trying to bribe at least one of his victims by promising money in exchange for silence. He said he was expecting a payout from the Trump administration in connection with his involvement in MAGA activists’ seize of the U.S. Capitol.
Prosecutors in Johnson’s Jan. 6 case said that he entered the building through a window that had been smashed by other rioters. The case against him included photos of Johnson marching on Capitol Hill with a bullhorn.
Trump had called the attack on the U.S. Capitol a “day of love” and praised participants as “great patriots who have been badly [and] unfairly treated for so long.”
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