Pardoned January 6 attacker sentenced to 10 years for fatal drunk-driving crash

One of the US Capitol attackers pardoned by Donald Trump at the start of his second presidency has been handed a 10-year prison sentence for killing a woman in a drunk-driving crash, according to authorities.

Emily Hernandez served 30 days in federal prison after she joined the mob of Trump supporters who stormed the US Capitol on 6 January 2021 and was photographed holding the broken nameplate of Nancy Pelosi, the House speaker at the time.

She was among 1,500 people with roles in the Capitol uprising who received unconditional pardons from – or had their sentences commuted by – Trump on 20 January, but that clemency did not solve all of her legal problems.

Hernandez, 24, on Wednesday was sentenced to a decade in prison for getting into a car wreck while driving drunk on an interstate in Franklin county, Missouri, in 2022 and killing Victoria Wilson, court records first reviewed by NBC News show. Hernandez also injured Wilson’s husband, Ryan Wilson, with whom she had two sons.

Emily Hernandez at the Capitol on 6 January 2021. Photograph: FBI

The Wilsons were out celebrating their 15th wedding anniversary when Hernandez struck their car while driving westbound in the eastbound lanes of Interstate 44, as the St Louis television station KDSK reported.

Victoria Wilson, 32, died of her ensuing injuries. Court documents note that Ryan Wilson endured a disabling injury to his right foot. And investigators later determined Hernandez had a blood-alcohol content of .125, over Missouri’s legal limit of .08 for most motorists.

On 5 November, the day Trump defeated Kamala Harris to clinch a second presidency, Hernandez pleaded guilty to driving while intoxicated leading to a person’s death and a separate charge of DWI resulting in serious injury. Her attorneys then filed documents contending that Hernandez deserved no more than about four months in prison, saying she acknowledged her actions were deadly and shameful.

“Emily’s emotional make-up will forever contain feelings of remorse, grief and shame,” Hernandez’s attorneys wrote in the filings ahead of her sentencing.

The January 6 attack on Congress was a desperate attempt to keep Trump in office after his first presidency ended in defeat to Joe Biden in the 2020 election. Hernandez pleaded guilty in federal court in January 2022 to a misdemeanor charge of entering and remaining in a restricted building or grounds on the day of the Capitol insurrection.

As he successfully campaigned for a return to the White House four years later, Trump promised to pardon those who participated in the attack on Congress, during which the mob of the president’s supporters beat police officers and trashed the Capitol building. Their attack was linked to several deaths, including suicides of traumatized officers.

Trump has been subjected to bipartisan criticism for the sweeping clemency he afforded the Capitol attackers, including those who inflicted violence on police at the building.

“It sends a message to others out there: if you use violence to keep Donald Trump in power, or use violence in the service of Donald Trump, he will have your back,” Adam Schiff, a California Democratic senator, said on NBC’s Meet the Press on 26 January. “Because he did have their back ultimately.”

Hernandez joined a number of pardoned Capitol attackers who have since made headlines over other brushes with the law.

Among those in that group is a man left grappling with unresolved charges in Texas of having solicited a minor. And yet another pardoned January 6 attacker was recently shot to death by police during a traffic stop in Indiana.