Pardoned Jan. 6 Rioter Charged With Threatening Hakeem Jeffries

Politics|Pardoned Jan. 6 Rioter Charged With Threatening Hakeem Jeffries

An upstate New York man pardoned by President Trump after taking part in the attack on the Capitol on Jan. 6, 2021, was charged last week with a new crime: threatening to assassinate Representative Hakeem Jeffries, the House Democratic leader, at an event in New York City.

The man, Christopher P. Moynihan, 34, sent text messages to an unknown associate on Friday threatening Mr. Jeffries’s life, according to a criminal complaint issued by local prosecutors in Dutchess County, N.Y.

“Hakeem Jeffries makes a speech in a few days in NYC I cannot allow this terrorist to live,” the complaint quoted Mr. Moynihan as saying. “Even if I am hated he must be eliminated. I will kill him for the future.”

Mr. Jeffries appeared on Monday for an address at the Economic Club of New York in Manhattan. In a statement issued on Tuesday, he thanked state and federal law enforcement for apprehending Mr. Moynihan.

“Since the blanket pardon that occurred earlier this year, many of the criminals released have committed additional crimes throughout the country,” Mr. Jeffries said. “Unfortunately, our brave men and women in law enforcement are being forced to spend their time keeping our communities safe from these violent individuals who should never have been pardoned.”

While other pardoned rioters have been rearrested since the president’s grant of clemency, Mr. Moynihan appears to be the only one so far who has been charged again with committing an offense against an elected official.

Mr. Moynihan, who lives in Clinton, N.Y., about 50 miles east of Syracuse, has a long history of drug addiction and petty crime, according to court papers. He has cycled through a number of jobs, including plumbing, carpentry and restaurant work, the papers say.

On Jan. 6, prosecutors say, he was among the first group of rioters to break into the Capitol, pushing through police lines and ultimately breaching the Senate chamber. There, court papers say, he rifled through a notebook on top of a senator’s desk.

In February 2023, Mr. Moynihan was sentenced to 21 months in prison after being convicted in Federal District Court in Washington of a felony count of obstructing a congressional proceeding. He also pleaded guilty to a series of misdemeanors connected to the riot.

But Mr. Moynihan was eventually pardoned by Mr. Trump as part of the president’s sweeping grant of clemency to all of the nearly 1,600 people who were charged in connection with the Capitol attack.

The New York State Police said in a statement over the weekend that Mr. Moynihan was being held in the Dutchess County jail in lieu of bail and is scheduled to appear in court on Thursday. Prosecutors have charged him with making a terroristic threat against Mr. Jeffries.

Experts in political violence have long expressed concerns that the clemency Mr. Trump extended to the Jan. 6 rioters, including those who assaulted police officers, could lead to further politically tinged violence.

Dating to his first term, Mr. Trump has wiped out the convictions and sentences of allies who continue to face legal trouble after leaving prison.

Brent Holdridge, a California man who was sentenced to 60 days in jail on a misdemeanor charge stemming from Jan. 6, was arrested again in May in connection with a string of alleged thefts of industrial copper.

Zachary Alam, who was sentenced to eight years in prison by a federal judge who called him “by far the loudest, the most combative and the most violent of the rioters,” was also charged again in May, accused of breaking into a house outside Richmond, Va.

Enrique Tarrio, the leader of the far-right Proud Boys, was briefly detained in February on assault charges after scuffling with a protester during a bizarre news conference he held outside the Capitol.

And Matthew W. Huttle, an Indiana carpenter who was sentenced to six months in prison in connection with Jan. 6, was fatally shot by a sheriff’s deputy in January after he resisted arrest during a traffic stop.