Key Point: “Former president Donald Trump on Thursday praised and embraced a woman convicted of defying police orders on the U.S. Capitol grounds on Jan. 6, 2021. … Trump has steadily escalated his advocacy for people charged in the Capitol riot, including by pledging to pardon them if he returns to the White House, praising them as patriots, participating in a recording with Jan. 6 prisoners singing the national anthem, and playing it at his first rally of the 2024 campaign last month.”

Washington Post: In N.H. stop, Trump embraces woman convicted in Jan. 6 case

By Isaac Arnsdorf

• Former president Donald Trump on Thursday praised and embraced a woman convicted of defying police orders on the U.S. Capitol grounds on Jan. 6, 2021.

• “Listen, you just hang in there,” Trump told the woman, Micki Larson-Olson, who was found guilty on a misdemeanor charge of resisting police efforts to clear the grounds after the insurrection by a pro-Trump mob. “You guys are gonna be okay.”

• Trump, who was campaigning here in New Hampshire, then agreed to sign the backpack she said she carried to the Capitol complex on the day of the interruption of the congressional proceedings to formally certify Trump’s loss in the 2020 election.

• “I can’t tell you how much that meant to me,” Larson-Olson said when Trump returned the backpack.

• Trump, the polling leader in the GOP presidential race, finished by taking a picture with her, hugging her, and giving her the personalized marker he used for his autograph.

• “You just take care of yourself,” Trump told her. “You’ve been through too much. You’re going to wind up being happy.”

• Trump has steadily escalated his advocacy for people charged in the Capitol riot, including by pledging to pardon them if he returns to the White House, praising them as patriots, participating in a recording with Jan. 6 prisoners singing the national anthem, and playing it at his first rally of the 2024 campaign last month.

• “I think it’s so terrible,” Trump said Thursday about the prosecution of Jan. 6 defendants.

• Larson-Olson, 54, said she drove 30 hours from her home in Abilene, Tex., to see Trump speak on Thursday in Manchester. Since serving her 180-day sentence, Larson-Olson said she joined a spinoff of the QAnon extremist movement known as Negative 48 that has frequented Trump rallies and campaign stops since last year.

• When Trump entered the restaurant, Foley and others began calling out to Trump that a “J6er” was present.

• “President Trump, will you please sign my Trump backpack that I carried up to Jan. 6?” Larson-Olson shouted. “I went to jail for 161 days for Jan. 6. I’m an Iraq War veteran.”

• Trump responded: “Patriots, I hear the woman.”

• “It’s terrible,” he added. “What they’re saying is so sad, what they’ve done to Jan. 6.”