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Scavo reflects on role during Jan. 6 riot

Four years after the insurrection at the U.S. Capitol on Jan. 6, 2021, former Old Forge School Director Frank Scavo says he regrets entering the building during the incident but that he has no qualms about his decision to lead several busloads of “patriots” to the scene to voice their concerns about the government.

“Do I regret entering the Capitol and what happened? Absolutely. Do I regret going to Washington, D.C., with four buses and 200 fellow patriots to redress our government?” asked Scavo, 61, of Old Forge. “Absolutely not. It’s a free country. We’re allowed to redress our government and go down there and let them know what we think.”

Scavo was one of four Luzerne or Lackawanna county residents who were charged in connection with the riot and who could now benefit from clemency President-elect Donald Trump has vowed to grant participants when he takes office later this month.

Scavo pleaded guilty to a misdemeanor count of demonstrating in the Capitol for his role and has already served 60 days in federal prison in Fort Dix, New Jersey.

During a phone interview on Monday, Scavo said the prosecution’s narrative that Trump supporters tried to prevent Congress from ratifying Scranton native Joe Biden’s election as president is misguided.

Most of the people in his entourage were more concerned with “out of control” government spending and the integrity of the election rather than Trump’s personality, he said.

“It’s not the rabid Donald Trump at any cost,” Scavo said. “People were concerned with the budget and the wasted money in these United States, and also the way the election was run. So it wasn’t really about — on my buses — the Donald Trump factor.”

While Scavo said there was a “radical element” on scene responsible for the situation getting out of hand, he maintained there had been no plan or organized effort for anything other than a call for Congress to ensure a fair election.

“The group that I went down there with was certainly not an insurgent task force,” he said. “All we wanted was a full, final accounting.”

Asked about the possibility that Trump, now re-elected to the nation’s top post, could pardon those charged in the riot, Scavo said he would welcome pardons and reviews of sentences that seem overly harsh and disproportionate to the offenses.

He also pointed to President Joe Biden’s recent commutation of the sentence of former Kids-for-Cash Judge Michael T. Conahan, who was convicted of accepting bribes to funnel juveniles into for-profit prisons.

“I would gladly forgo my pardon, if I was so lucky, to reverse the commutation of Judge Michael Conahan’s (sentence),” Scavo said. “I’m OK with what I did, my conviction. I own up to it. But Michael Conahan and Joe Biden’s (commutation) is much more egregious than anything I did on Jan. 6.”

Three other area residents could also benefit from presidential clemency: Annie C. Howell of Swoyersville pleaded guilty to trespassing on restricted property and was sentenced to 60 days in jail followed by three years probation; Michael Rusyn, an Olyphant volunteer firefighter, pleaded guilty to demonstrating in the Capitol and was sentenced to 60 days of house arrest; and Olyphant resident Deborah Lynn Lee, whose case is still pending in federal court.

During a 2023 interview with The Citizen’s Voice, Howell said she felt she had been “brainwashed” by claims about election and fraud and that she regretted recording a video in a trashed conference room shouting, “Whose house? Our house!”

Messages left for Howell and Lee were not immediately returned Monday.

Scavo, meanwhile, remains a Trump supporter and said he intends to return to Washington, D.C., for the former president’s re-inauguration on Jan. 20.

“Absolutely,” he said. “Same intent: peacefully. It’s going to be nice.”