During a hearing before the US House committee investigating the insurgency, Stephen Ayres testified that he felt called by former President Donald Trump to come to Washington on January 6, 2021. He described being swayed by Trump’s false claims and believing as he marched to Capitol Hill that Trump would join them there and that there was still a chance the election could be overturned. “I felt like I had blinkers on like a horse. I was locked up the whole time,” said Ayres, who is scheduled to be sentenced in September after pleading guilty to misdemeanor rioting. His message to others: “Take off your blinders, be sure to step back and see what’s going on before it’s too late.” “It changed my life,” she said. “And not for good.” Ayres, who was not charged with violence or destruction on Jan. 6, said he had worked at a ministry company in northeast Ohio for 20 years but lost his job and sold his home after the riot. His wife was with him at the hearing. After the hearing, Ayres approached the officers in the commission room who testified that they were verbally and physically assaulted by the angry crowd. Ayres apologized for his actions to Capitol Police Officers Aquilino Gonell and Harry Dunn, Metropolitan Police Officer Daniel Hodges and former MPD Officer Michael Fanone. More on the January 6 committee hearing The officers appeared to have mixed responses to Ayres’ attempt to make amends. Fanone told The Associated Press that an apology was unnecessary because “it doesn’t apply to me.” Hodges told CNN that he accepted the apology, adding that “you have to believe that there are people out there who can change.” Gonell, who recently found out the injuries he succumbed to on Jan. 6 will no longer allow him to be a member of the force, said he accepted the sentiment from Ayres, but not much. “He still has to answer for what he did legally. And to his God. So it’s up to him,” said the former Sgt. Dunn, who did not stand up when approached by Ayres, said he did not accept his apology. The Jan. 6 House committee investigating the insurgency sought to use Ayres’ testimony to show how Trump’s Dec. 19, 2020, tweet calling for his supporters in Washington mobilized not only far-right extremist groups, but moderates as well. Americans to descend on the nation’s capital. . Ayres described being a loyal Trump follower on social media before Jan. 6 and said he felt he had to heed the president’s call to come to Washington, D.C., for the “Stop the Steal” rally. “I was very upset, as were most of his supporters,” Ayres said when asked about Trump’s baseless campaign claims. Asked by Rep. Liz Cheney if he still believes the election was stolen, Ayres said: “Not so much now.” Ayres said he had not planned to storm the Capitol before Trump’s speech “woke everybody up.” He believed the president would accompany them to the Capitol. “Basically, we were just going with what he said,” Ayres said. Ayres said he and his friends who accompanied him to Washington decided to leave the Capitol after Trump sent a tweet asking the rioters to leave. If Trump had done so earlier in the day, “maybe we wouldn’t be in such a bad situation,” Ayres said. Ayres said it angers him that Trump is still pushing his false claims about the election. “I was hanging on every word he was saying,” she said. “Whatever he came up with, I followed.” His testimony echoed the words of many Capitol Hill rioters who expressed remorse for their crimes at sentencing hearings. He is among about 840 people who have been charged with federal crimes related to the Jan. 6 riot. More than 330 of them have pleaded guilty, mostly to misdemeanor charges punishable by no more than a year in prison. More than 200 have been convicted. In his court case, Ayres admitted that he drove from Ohio to Washington on the eve of the “Stop the Steal” rally to protest Congress’s certification of Electoral College vote counting. He entered the Capitol through the doors of the Senate wing and remained inside for about 10 minutes, shouting with other rioters. In a Facebook post four days before the riot, Ayres attached an image of a poster that read “the president is calling us back to Washington on Jan. 6 for a big protest.” In another Facebook post before the riot, he wrote: “The mainstream media, social media, the Democratic party, the FISA courts, Chief Justice John Roberts, Joe Biden, Nancy Pelosi, etc. … all have committed TREASON against a sitting US president! !! Everything is now announced by ‘We The People!’”

Associated Press reporters Farnoush Amiri, Mary Clare Jalonick and Nomaan Merchant contributed to this report from Washington.

For full coverage of the January 6 hearings, go to