The Man Who Ripped My Badge Off on January 6th Is Back in Court

This is a free preview of a paid episode. To hear more, visit michaelfanone.substack.comHe tore my badge off while a mob was beating me. Now he’s back in a courtroom.On January 6th, 2021, I was a D.C. Metropolitan Police officer doing my job outside the Capitol. By the end of that day I’d been dragged into the crowd, tased over and over, beaten, and nearly killed. And while I was pinned down fighting to stay conscious, one of them reached in and pulled the badge and radio right off my tactical vest.That man was Thomas Sibick, of Amherst, New York.If you followed the January 6th cases, his name might ring a bell — he was one of the more notorious arrests out of that day. Court filings say he later posed for a photo holding a stolen Capitol Police riot shield. When the FBI caught up with him, he changed his story more than once: first he was trying to help me, then he’d pressed the radio’s emergency button to call for backup. Prosecutors weren’t buying it — the emergency signal wasn’t triggered until sixteen minutes after other cops had already pulled me to safety. Eventually he admitted the truth. He’d buried my badge in his own backyard.In 2023 he pleaded guilty to a felony count of assaulting officers, plus theft. Fifty months in federal prison. That should’ve been the end of it.It wasn’t. In January 2025, Trump signed a blanket clemency order covering roughly 1,500 people tied to January 6th — Sibick among them. He walked out of federal prison and went home to Western New York.Here’s where it gets interesting.First, he was arraigned in Amherst Town Court — nothing to do with January 6th, a misdemeanor criminal mischief charge for allegedly smashing a victim’s cellphone. It didn’t meet New York’s threshold for bail, so he was released on his own recognizance, and the court issued a temporary order of protection for the alleged victim.That could’ve stayed a small local court item. It didn’t.Days later he was back in the same courthouse, this time facing six counts of third-degree criminal possession of a weapon — all class D felonies. Prosecutors say he illegally had three assault rifles and three large-capacity magazines. This time he was remanded into custody.Let me be clear about the two threads here, because they’re easy to blur. Thread one is January 6th: convicted, sentenced, pardoned. As far as the federal government is concerned, that chapter is legally closed — that’s what a pardon does. Thread two is new: fresh, alleged conduct, none of it proven in court yet. He’s presumed innocent, and I mean that.But the reason this story travels isn’t the gun charges in New York. It’s that the name attached to them belongs to a man whose violence got wiped clean by Trump.And Sibick isn’t an outlier. The watchdog group CREW has tracked at least 40 pardoned January 6th defendants who’ve since been rearrested, charged, or sentenced for other crimes — roughly a dozen of them allegedly reoffending after the pardons took effect.Some of it is stomach-turning. Andrew Paul Johnson, pardoned in January 2025, was convicted in February 2026 of child molestation and sentenced to life, with prosecutors saying some of the abuse continued after his release. Zachary Alam was convicted of grand larceny and burglary within months of his pardon. Ryan Nichols was charged in May 2026 after allegedly threatening someone with a gun in a church parking lot. Daniel Ball — who prosecutors say attacked police with an explosive device on January 6th — was rearrested within days of his pardon on illegal weapons charges tied to a prior domestic violence record.Weapons cases like Sibick’s aren’t unusual in the pile either. CREW counts at least five other pardoned defendants facing firearms charges, and once you add the DUIs, assaults, and fraud allegations, the pattern runs across dozens of names.None of that proves anything about Sibick’s pending charges. He’s still presumed innocent, and this all has to be tried. But it does mean this isn’t a one-off. It’s a pattern that’s been documented, case by case, for more than a year.Trump turned his own private militia of losers loose on the country, and they’ve been wrecking havoc ever since.Talk about making America great again.🟧 Paid subscribers get 15% off your next merch order🟧 Founding Members get 20% off for lifeYou’ll get the link in your welcome email.GET DISCOUNTS BELOW! ENJOY!