Pardoned Jan. 6 Rioter Larry Giberson ’23 Calls for Unity

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Larry Giberson ’23

Courtesy of Larry Giberson ’23

Larry Giberson ’23 has regrets about his participation in the Jan. 6, 2021, attack on the U.S. Capitol, but he told PAW he believes the pardon President Donald Trump extended to the rioters on his first day in office is “a signal of unity and a signal of forgiveness that doesn’t even necessarily apply to the individuals who receive it so much as it applies to the nation as a whole.”

Giberson was convicted of felony civil disorder and sentenced to two months in prison for his actions that day, which, according to a sentencing memorandum filed by the prosecution, included entering the Lower West Terrace Tunnel, joining others in an attempt “to create a wall of stolen police shields against the line of police officers,” and coordinating “in pushing and pulling against the police.”

Giberson spent just over seven weeks at the Federal Correctional Institute in Danbury, Connecticut, and six months on home detention at his parents’ house in Manahawkin, New Jersey, last year. Though his sentence was already complete when he was pardoned, he said it should allow him to restore his firearms purchaser identification card and serve on juries, as well as make it easier to travel internationally.

He told PAW in late January that he is still a supporter of President Trump and believes there were legal irregularities about the 2020 election, such as the expansion of mail-in balloting, that needed to be addressed. He also believes “a lot of people were treated very unfairly” by the U.S. Department of Justice for their role in the riot. More than 1,000 people pleaded guilty or were convicted of federal charges for their roles in the riot as of August, according to the Department of Justice.

Giberson attributes his actions on Jan. 6 in part to “the culture war [that] really flared up” in 2020 when there was “butting heads between both sides.”

“We all got crazy during COVID. Now, not everybody got as wet and wild as I did, but I think there’s this period in our history … [when] people were at a loss for what to do, or how to act. And so, I think part of what this pardon is, is we’re done with that era of our history, and we can look back on it and we can learn from it, but we can also look to the future and move forward,” Giberson said.

He pointed to his youth as another contributing factor, stating that ideas can be dangerous “when you don’t know how to use them, when you haven’t gotten the context for it all yet, when you are still really just a kid and you haven’t really stepped into the real world yet.”

While admitting that he’s “no innocent,” Giberson also said that “when you’re in a crowd of people where there’s a lot of emotion and turmoil and anger roiling about, that can be a dangerous place to be. And that can be a dangerous way to get sucked up in a crowd and do things that you later regret.”

Since his ankle monitor was removed on Veteran’s Day weekend, Giberson has been “taking some time for me — a mental health break,” which has included “basically traveling across the country, living out of my car,” and visiting 27 states. Before he was arrested in early 2023, and while he was still a Princeton student, Giberson took a three-week trip across Canada mostly because he knew the country is one of the strictest in terms of permitting entry to convicted felons.

This month, he plans to fly to South Korea and then spend more than a month in Japan.

He isn’t sure what’s he’ll do after his Asia trip, but Giberson does know what it won’t involve: “Dealing with the legal system as firsthand as you can get it really gave a sour taste in my mouth for the practice of law. … So, I probably saved myself a lot of money on law school.”