Arrest of pardoned Jan. 6 rioter adds to embarrassing trend for White House

Once is an anomaly, twice is a trend — and whatever number we have hit in the running tally of MAGA activists charged with sex crimes certainly constitutes a disturbing pattern. 

My colleague Steve Benen has done an excellent job of keeping track of Jan. 6 insurrectionists who have been charged or convicted of sex crimes after being pardoned by President Donald Trump last year as part of his authoritarian push to shield Jan. 6 participants from criminal accountability. 

That list grew a tad longer Friday with the arrest in Florida of two Trump supporters among more than 250 others as part of a prostitution, human trafficking and child predator sting.

Polk County Sheriff Grady Judd identified one of the suspects as Ryan Yates, whose guilty plea to a felony charge of civil disorder was among the many convictions cleared by Trump’s pardon.

“We’re not giving him a blanket pardon,” Judd said during his Friday conference. “He [Yates] got away with it with a federal system. But not here,” Judd said. “He came here to violate the law. We arrested him.”

WTSP reports that Yates is out on bond for a charge of soliciting prostitution.

At the press conference, Judd also named Craig Long, whom he described as an influencer and pro-police activist. “He moves in big circles, even with the president,” the sheriff said, displaying a photograph of Long with Trump and Donald Trump Jr. at a UFC event last month. Long had posted the photograph to social media with the caption, “Haters RIP.”

Long was charged with soliciting prostitution and has pleaded not guilty, according to WFLA.

Prior to Trump’s 2024 election, the MAGA movement spent years attempting to cast liberals as groomers and sex criminals. That’s consistent with other far-right, Christian nationalist movements that have used such accusations against their political opponents. Historian Mara Keire wrote in 2019 about the rampant sex abuse tolerated within the Ku Klux Klan, where members comported themselves as above the law, targeting women and girls while portraying immigrants and Black people as the true threats. It’s a strategy — and act of projection — that has been around a long time.

Meanwhile, evidence keeps popping up that points to a scourge of sex predation taking place within the president’s political movement.

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