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Kansas Jan. 6 defendant demands K-State job back with pay after Trump dismisses charges

Judy L. Thomas, The Kansas City Star on

Published in News & Features

A Kansas man whose Jan. 6 case was dismissed last week by President Donald Trump is demanding that Kansas State University immediately give him back the teaching job it fired him from, along with four years of back pay.

William Pope, of Topeka — among the hundreds whose criminal cases were dismissed last week when Trump granted clemency to Jan. 6 defendants — also said he was going to finish the doctorate degree he was working on at K-State and demanded a waiver of his remaining tuition fees.

“I WON MY CASE,” Pope wrote in a letter Monday to K-State President Richard Linton. “There are now no felony or misdemeanor charges against me to prevent me from being employed by Kansas State University … and it’s time for the university to right this wrong.”

Pope, who was a graduate teaching assistant, added that if a position isn’t currently available, he wants four years of back pay and three years of future pay to cover his educational expenses as he completes his dissertation.

If K-State doesn’t comply by Feb. 1, Pope wrote, he will file a civil suit seeking millions of dollars in damages and file a complaint with the U.S. Department of Education and U.S. Department of Justice alleging that “this wrongful termination explicitly violated the Higher Education Act … which protects student speech and association rights.”

“I was exercising First Amendment rights from the beginning, and ultimately, I have been vindicated,” he said.

K-State spokeswoman Michelle Geering provided a brief response in an email to The Star on Wednesday morning.

“The university fully embraces applicable privacy regulations and additional information on this situation is not available to share,” she said.

In his letter, Pope, 38, said K-State offered him the job as a graduate teaching assistant in the Department of Communication Studies on Feb. 22, 2019. He taught public speaking, saying he was “highly successful in that work, and I received excellent reviews from my students.”

Pope was indicted Feb. 17, 2021, on two felony counts and six misdemeanors in connection with the Capitol breach and represented himself in his case. One felony and two misdemeanor counts were dismissed last year, and he succeeded in getting his trial date moved to this June.

But on Jan. 20, Pope’s entire case was dismissed as a result of the executive order Trump signed on his first day in office, granting full pardons to hundreds who had been convicted and commuting the sentences of 14 members of the Proud Boys and Oath Keepers. Trump also directed the attorney general to dismiss all pending cases.

Nearly 1,600 people were charged for their alleged actions on Jan. 6, including 40 Missouri residents and 10 from Kansas.

Fired in February 2021

Pope said in his letter that then-K-State President Richard Myers had fired him on Feb. 22, 2021, citing a Kansas Board of Regents policy that says a university “has the authority to discharge or place on leave without pay any employee, including a tenured faculty member, who has been charged with a felony offense.”

Pope — who has become a folk hero of sorts among Jan. 6 defendants over his outspokenness and sometimes unconventional court filings — said that “over the last four years, I have made Kansas State University proud by accomplishing what was believed to be impossible.”

“I represented myself in court, untrained in law, and beat the United States government in a hostile venue,” he wrote. “This accomplishment has resulted in Ivy League Law professors and the current United States Attorney for the District of Columbia referring to me as the greatest Pro Se defendant in American History.”

Pope said that in “winning this victory,” he “outwitted entire federal agencies and more than a dozen of the fiercest and most powerful government attorneys in America … ”

 

“It’s surprising that Kansas State University has not yet awarded me an honorary Doctor of Philosophy degree for this historic accomplishment … ,” he wrote. But even so, he said, he intends to complete his Ph.D. at K-State “by writing a dissertation on the engaged leadership that the January 6 defendants demonstrated while battling against government tyranny in court.”

“This will likely be one of the most cited dissertations in the history of Kansas State University,” he said.

Pope also warned that “if we cannot settle this amicably,” he would file a criminal complaint with the Justice Department “asking them to investigate Kansas State University’s conspiracy with the FBI to deprive me of my rights.”

University faces challenging decision

Legal experts say the issue puts K-State in a difficult position.

“They’re damned if they do and damned if they don’t,” said Carl Tobias, a law professor at the University of Richmond. “There are going to be plenty of people on both sides of this.”

Sometimes, Tobias said, corporations, governments and universities realize that bad publicity is just not worth it.

“And so it sounds like it could be a case that could be settled,” he said. “He (Pope) doesn’t sound unreasonable, he’s obviously a smart person, and what he’s written is articulate and will be persuasive. And so maybe there’s a way that they could settle this out of court, because the litigation is going to be expensive.

“The University could say, ‘OK, we’ll pay you some money. We’ll reinstate you as a teacher, and maybe waive tuition’ or something like that. He’s probably not going to get everything he demands. So that may just be the better way. It just may not be worth the headache.”

Mark Tushnet, a Harvard Law School professor, said in an email that the case will largely hinge on Kansas contract law, including the terms and interpretation of the Board of Regents policies.

“But it seems to me that the claims for back pay and damages between the nonrenewal and the dismissal of the charge are highly unlikely to succeed if ordinary contract principles are applied,” he said.

Over the past week, Pope — who has more than 55,000 followers on X — has been encouraging his supporters to contact K-State officials to demand that he be hired back. Many have done just that.

“Come-on Kansas State be the University you say you are,” Kevin Riffel sent in a post to the university’s X account on Saturday. “This guy is innocent! Hire Will back.”

And Eric V Harris and Regina Brown posted on X last week: “@KState offer @FreeStateWill his job back with backpay. It’s time to apologize to #J6PoliticalPrisoners and do our best to restore them to their previous lives. It’s time to stand-up for these winter Soldiers and Patriots in the worst of times.”

Others, however, didn’t see it that way.

“Let me get this straight,” posted Kevin Ross. “So you took part in a riot where people broke into the capital building in order to overturn the election and got fired for it. Now you’re suing the college for firing you for your felony? Good luck with that.”


©2025 The Kansas City Star. Visit at kansascity.com. Distributed by Tribune Content Agency, LLC.

 

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