For four years, he has tried to stage-manage the erasure of his role in inspiring the assault. It was only hours after the attack that his allies in the House and on Fox News began sowing doubt about the motivation for the rioters, claiming it was organized by leftists masquerading as Trump supporters. By 2022, when he was under investigation by the House Jan. 6 committee, he began referring to the rioters as “political prisoners” persecuted by Democrats and openly suggesting that the F.B.I. had helped stage the attack. By the time his presidential campaign was in full swing last year, he had completely transformed the day’s monstrous bloody fury into what he called a “day of love” and insisted falsely that none of his supporters had brought guns to the Capitol.
But Mr. Trump’s dense fog of misinformation can’t change what really happened on that terrible day, which, as the Times editorial board wrote at the time, “touched the darkest memories and fears of democracies the world over.” It was a sentiment in the early aftermath of the attack echoed even by senior Republicans, some of whom would go on to vote to impeach Mr. Trump for his role in instigating it.
At least 20 people who joined the attack did carry firearms onto the Capitol grounds, including Christopher Alberts, who wore body armor containing metal plates and carried a 9-millimeter pistol loaded with 12 rounds of ammunition, along with a separate 12-round holster that included hollow-point bullets. He was sentenced to 84 months in prison after a jury convicted him of nine charges, including assaulting law enforcement officers, but received a full pardon on Monday. More than 140 police officers were assaulted that day; Brian Sicknick, a Capitol Police officer, was killed, and other officers were smashed in the head with weapons; they were bruised, burned and lacerated; four later died by suicide.
-“My concern is that people are going to believe that if they attack me or members of my family physically that Donald Trump will absolve them of their acts,” Michael Fanone, a former police officer attacked by the crowd on Jan. 6, told The Times. “And who is to say he wouldn’t?”
For many of the officers who were pepper-sprayed or hit with two-by-fours or beaten that day, the thought that the nation’s chief executive would forgive such actions is despicable. “Releasing those who assaulted us from blame would be a desecration of justice,” Aquilino Gonell, a former Capitol Police sergeant who suffered lasting injuries in the riot, wrote in a Times Opinion guest essay this month. “If Mr. Trump wants to heal our divided nation, he’ll let their convictions stand.”
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