Florida woman spent 18 months in prison for threatening FBI. Trump pardoned her

Suzanne Ellen Kaye spent a year and a half in a prison cell for social media threats against FBI agents who were going to her home to question her back in 2021 about her possible involvement in the Jan. 6 attack on the U.S. Capitol. On Friday, well after Kaye completed her sentence, President Donald J. Trump pardoned her of the crime.

Trump’s order was made public Saturday by Edward R. Martin, Jr., the pardon attorney for the Justice Department. He cast Kaye as a martyr persecuted by President Joe Biden’s Justice Department.

“President Trump is unwinding the damage done by Biden’s DOJ weaponization, so the healing can begin,” Martin wrote on X.

READ MORE: FBI called a Florida woman about the Jan. 6 attack. What she did next landed her in prison

In January 2021, the FBI called Kaye, from Boca Raton, in hopes of interviewing her about her possible involvement in the Jan. 6 attack. The FBI’s national threats operation center had received an online tip.

Kaye, it turns out, was not at the U.S. Capitol on Jan. 6, 2021, according to court records. But before agents arrived at her home, Kaye posted three videos on her Facebook page, ANGRY Patriot Hippie. One was captioned “F*** the FBI,” and mentioned that agents wanted to meet with her, court records show. Then, she threatened to exercise her “second amendment right to shoot your f****** a**” if the FBI pulled up to her home.

Agents did go to her home and arrested her for the threats in the Facebook posts.

Kaye, 61 at the time, said the videos were supposed to be a joke. But she was found guilty by a federal district judge in West Palm Beach in a 2022 jury trial. She was sentenced to 18 months in prison, which she served to completion, and two years of supervised release, which was terminated early in August, federal court records show.

Andrew Adler, a federal public defender representing Kaye, did not immediately respond for comment on the pardon.