Capitol riots: Man convicted of taking part in disorder expects Trump to set him free
A man convicted of participating in the January 6 Capitol riots has told Sky News he expects Donald Trump to set him free.
Speaking from his Washington jail cell, Gregory Purdy said he anticipates the president-elect will “exonerate and pardon” him.
Mr Trump has said he intends to pardon “many” of the rioters whom he describes as “hostages”.
More than 1,100 people have been charged in connection with the 2021 assault on the Capitol, in which crowds stormed the building in an effort to block the certification of Joe Biden‘s election win.
More than 500 people have been handed jail sentences. Five people died and 140 police officers were injured.
President Biden fuelled the debate around pardons when he gave one to his son, Hunter, spanning 10 years and including two convictions – one for illegal gun possession and another for tax evasion.
Supporters of January 6 prisoners gather outside a jail in Washington DC for a nightly vigil. They communicate with inmates on the phone from a street corner outside the facility.
Guy Reffitt (right) was the first person to be convicted of January 6 offences
‘He will exonerate us’
We used the phone to speak to Gregory Purdy, who has been convicted of January 6 offences.
Asked about the prospect of a Trump pardon, he said: “He will exonerate and pardon us, I really do believe that will happen.”
“As far as Joe Biden pardoning his son, I don’t have a problem that he pardoned his son, what I have a problem with is he lied and said he wouldn’t,” he added.
The scene of the riots at the Capitol on 6 January 2021. Pic: Reuters
Nicole Reffitt has attended most of the 800-plus vigils outside the Washington prison. Her husband, Guy Reffitt, was the first person convicted of January 6 offences.
Prosecutors said the Texan father-of-three, a member of the “Three Percenters” anti-government militia, “lit the match” of an insurrection.
The court heard he was armed with a handgun at the Capitol and had an automatic rifle in his car. His son, Jackson, had reported concerns about his father to the FBI in the weeks before January 6.
Nicole Reffitt
Nicole lives in a house a short drive from the facility where her husband is imprisoned. It accommodates relatives of Jan 6 prisoners, who travel from around the country to attend court and make prison visits.
She and her fellow occupants have labelled the property “eagle’s nest”, after the national bird of the United States. She rejects associations that have been made with Adolf Hitler’s “eagle’s nest”, his Bavarian retreat.
“You can do Hitler connotations with anything you want to,” she said. “Don’t drive a Volkswagen, how about that? The Nazis invented the Volkswagen.”
On the subject of a pardon, Nicole told Sky News: “Not everyone will ask for a pardon, many will ask for clemency… because there have been a lot of arguments made in court and those things have to stay on the record.”
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When Joe Biden handed down the pardon to his son, Mr Trump reacted by posting on social media: “Does the pardon given by Joe to Hunter include the J-6 Hostages, who have now been imprisoned for years? Such an abuse and miscarriage of Justice.”
On the implications for her husband and fellow inmates, Nicole Reffitt said: “When you look at someone being pardoned for 10 years, a decade of any criminal activity that might have taken place – yeah, I think it shines very brightly on Jan Sixers, when many of them have no criminal record ever and this is their only offence.”
National Guard troops have begun arriving on the streets of Washington DC in a controversial move by Donald Trump to “rescue our nation’s capital from crime”.
The deployment of some of the planned 800 troops comes despite the Washington mayor revealing crime in the capital was at its “lowest level in 30 years” – and with official data also showing a steep decline.
President Trump has promised to take over the district’s police department, something the law allows him to do temporarily.
The army has indicated there were no specific locations for the deployment, according to the Associated Press, citing a White House official who spoke on the condition of anonymity.
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Trump: National Guard deployment will ‘take capital back’
At the beginning of the week, Mr Trump said he was sending in 800 National Guard troops to “re-establish law, order, and public safety”.
He announced a “historic action to rescue our nation’s capital from crime, bloodshed, bedlam and squalor and worse”.
But according to preliminary figures from Washington DC’s Metropolitan Police, violent crime is down 26% in 2025 – after dropping 35% in 2024 compared with 2023.
Pic: Reuters
Washington mayor Muriel Bowser said crime was at historic lows in the capital and called the move “unsettling and unprecedented” – but would use the extra personnel to reduce crime further.
And in a post on social media, she wrote: “Violent crime in DC is at its lowest level in 30 years. We had an unacceptable spike in 2023, so we changed our laws and strategies.”
She said the National Guard would not have the power to arrest people.
Troops will carry no weapons but will have their standard issue firearms, usually rifles, close at hand, an official said.
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The Democrats and other critics have called Mr Trump’s deployment “political theatre” – but the president has threatened to repeat the move in other big cities.
Jeanine Pirro, the US attorney for the capital, dismissed a question from a reporter about how violence in Washington compared to other cities.
She said: “All I know is we rank in death. I don’t need any more statistics.”
In Washington, the DC National Guard reports directly to the president.
In the states, the troops answer to the governor except when called into federal service.
It’s beginning to feel like “Midnight Sun” diplomacy.
In parts of Alaska, the sun doesn’t set in summer, casting light through the night but leaving you disorientated.
Ukraine latest: Zelenskyy reject’s Putin’s proposal
The Trump-Putin summit is pitched as “transparent” but it’s difficult to find any path to peace right now.
White House press secretary Karoline Leavitt has reduced it to a “listening exercise” where Donald Trump will seek a “better understanding” of the situation.
There isn’t much to understand – Russia wants territory, Ukraine isn’t ceding it – but Ms Levitt rejects talk of them “tempering expectations”.
It’s possible to be both hopeful and measured, she says, because Mr Trump wants peace but is only meeting one side on Friday.
It’s the fact that he’s only meeting Vladimir Putin that concerns European leaders, who fear Ukraine could be side-lined by any Trump-Putin pact.
Volodymyr Zelenskyy claims Mr Putin wants the rest of Donetsk and, in effect, the entire Donbas region in eastern Ukraine.
He’s ruled out surrendering that because it would rob him of key defence lines and leave Kyiv vulnerable to future offensives.
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‘Steps have been taken to remedy the situation’ in Pokrovsk
European leaders – including Sir Keir Starmer – will hold online talks with Mr Zelenskyy twice on Wednesday, on either side of a virtual call with Mr Trump and US Vice President JD Vance.
Their concerns may be getting through, hence the White House now framing the summit as a cautious fact-finding exercise and nothing more.
The only thing we really learned from the latest news conference is that the first Trump-Putin meeting in six years will be in Anchorage.
Alaska itself, with its history and geography, is a layered metaphor: a place the Russians sold to the US in the 1800s.
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Russian traditional nesting dolls with images of Vladimir Putin and Donald Trump at a gift shop in Moscow. Pic: Reuters
A remote but strategic frontier where the lines of ownership and the rules of negotiation are once again being sketched out.
On a clear day, you can see Russia from Alaska, but without Mr Zelenskyy in the room, it’s difficult to see them conquering any summit.
In the place where the sun never sets, the deal might never start.
Donald Trump has said he would try to return territory to Ukraine as he prepares to meet Vladimir Putin and lay the groundwork for a deal to bring an end to the war.
“Russia has occupied a big portion of Ukraine. They’ve occupied some very prime territory. We’re going to try and get some of that territory back for Ukraine,” the US president said at a White House news conference ahead of Friday’s summit in Alaska.
Mr Trump also said: “There’ll be some land swapping going on. I know that through Russia and through conversations with everybody, to the good of Ukraine.”
He said he’s going to see what Mr Putin “has in mind” to end the three-and-a-half-year full-scale invasion.
Donald Trump speaks to reporters at the White House. Pic: Reuters
And he said if it’s a “fair deal,” he will share it with European and NATO leaders, as well as Volodymyr Zelenskyy, who have been liaising closely with Washington ahead of the meeting.
Asked if Mr Zelenskyy was invited to the summit with Mr Putin in Alaska, Mr Trump said the Ukrainian leader “wasn’t a part of it”.
“I would say he could go, but he’s gone to a lot of meetings. You know, he’s been there for three and a half years – nothing happened,” Mr Trump added.
The US president said Mr Putin wants to get the war “over with” and “get involved” in possible talks but acknowledged Moscow’s attacks haven’t stopped.
“I’ve said that a few times and I’ve been disappointed because I’d have a great call with him and then missiles would be lobbed into Kyiv or some other place,” he said.
Mr Trump said he will tell Mr Putin “you’ve got to end this war, you’ve got to end it,” but that “it’s not up to me” to make a deal between Russia and Ukraine.
Vladimir Putin is set to meet Donald Trump in Alaska. Pic: Reuters
Zelenskyy says Russia ‘wants to buy time’
Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy has said Russia “wants to buy time, not end the war”.
“It is obvious that the Russians simply want to buy time, not end the war,” he wrote in a post on X, after a phone call with Canada’s Prime Minister Mark Carney.
Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy. Pic: Reuters
“The situation on the battlefield and Russia’s wicked strikes on civilian infrastructure and ordinary people prove this clearly.”
Mr Zelenskyy said the two “agreed that no decisions concerning Ukraine’s future and the security of our people can be made without Ukraine’s participation”, just as “there can be no decisions without clear security guarantees”.
Sanctions against Russia must remain in force and be “constantly strengthened,” he added.
European leaders meet ahead of call with Trump
Meanwhile, European officials have been holding meetings ahead of a phone call with Mr Trump on Wednesday.
The European Union’s foreign policy chief, Kaja Kallas, has been speaking to foreign ministers virtually, saying on X that work “on more sanctions against Russia, more military support for Ukraine and more support for Ukraine’s budgetary needs and accession process to join the EU” is under way.
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‘Russians want to carry on fighting’
Over the weekend, European leaders released a joint statement, welcoming Mr Trump’s “work to stop the killing in Ukraine”.
“We are convinced that only an approach that combines active diplomacy, support to Ukraine and pressure on the Russian Federation to end their illegal war can succeed,” read the statement.
It was signed by UK Prime Minister Sir Keir Starmer, French President Emmanuel Macron, Italian Prime Minister Giorgia Meloni, German Chancellor Friedrich Merz, Polish Prime Minister Donald Tusk, Finland’s President Alexander Stubb, and European Commission President Ursula von der Leyen.
“We underline our unwavering commitment to Ukraine’s sovereignty, independence and territorial integrity,” they said.
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Attacks continue
Despite Donald Trump’s efforts to convince Vladimir Putin to commit to a ceasefire and negotiations, Russian attacks on Ukraine have only intensified in the past few months.
Ukraine’s president has said that, in the past week, Russia launched more than 1,000 air bombs, nearly 1,400 drones and multiple missile strikes on Ukraine.
On 9 July, Russia carried out its largest aerial attack on Ukraine since the start of the war, launching more than 740 drones and missiles, breaking its records from previous weeks.
Furthermore, Mr Zelenskyy has said Russia is preparing for new offensives.
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