A day after US President Donald Trump granted clemency to all of the nearly 1,600 people charged in connection with the 2021 attack on the Capitol, America’s far right rejoiced. Some have called for the death of judges who oversaw the trials. Others celebrated and expressed relief. Some even cried with joy.
Several experts who study extremism said this extraordinary turnaround for rioters who committed violent and nonviolent crimes on Jan. 6, including assaults on police officers and seditious conspiracy, will embolden the Proud Boys and other extremist groups such as white supremacists who have openly called for political violence.
With a few strokes of a pen, Mr. Trump quashed the largest investigation and prosecution in the history of the US Department of Justice, attempting to rewrite what happened during the violent riot of January 6 2021. As he took office for a second term on Monday, Mr. Trump continued to falsely claim that the 2020 election was rigged and that he was the rightful winner. He described the riots as a peaceful “day of love” rather than a melee aimed at overturning the results of the 2020 US presidential election.
“We’re not going to put up with this bullshit anymore,” Mr. Trump said at a rally after his inauguration on Monday, calling the January 6 offenders “hostages.”
For the defendants convicted on January 6, and for Mr. Trump’s loyalists, the pardons are revenge for the unjust persecutions carried out by the president’s political enemies. Gavin McInnes, the British-born founder of the Proud Boys, said in an interview that he and his friends were celebrating late Monday by “drinking bourbons and laughing out loud.”
Before the 2020 election, Mr. Trump told the Proud Boys — an all-male violent extremist group — to “stay back and don’t intervene.” Three months later, federal prosecutors say, the group’s leaders planned the Jan. 6 attack.
“It’s a victory for us,” said Mr. McInnes, who is now a right-wing podcaster. If Mr. Trump had not granted clemency to all the Proud Boys, he would have been “dead to me, to the Proud Boys, to MAGA and to everyone,” he said. “But fortunately that didn’t happen.
In a video posted online shortly after the pardons, convicted rioter Christopher Kuehne, a Marine veteran from Kansas who traveled to Washington with the Proud Boys in January 2021, sobbed: “I’m finally free. I I don’t even have the words to thank President Trump for what he has done for us.” He was sentenced in February to 75 days in jail and 24 months of supervised release for obstructing law enforcement.
Another Proud Boy told Reuters the pardons would help recruit more members. “A lot of people distanced themselves from us after the arrests,” he said, speaking on condition of anonymity. “Now they’re going to feel like they’re safe from bullets.
The riot began after Mr. Trump rallied thousands of supporters to march on the Capitol on January 6, 2021, as Congress was certifying Democrat Joe Biden’s victory. Inspired by Trump’s unfounded claims of rigged elections, they invaded the Capitol, sparking pitched battles with police. Some bludgeoned officers with makeshift weapons, including metal pipes, wooden poles and baseball bats. Prosecutors said the rioters carried guns, tasers, swords, hatchets and knives.
Four people died on the day of the attack, including a protester shot dead by police. A Capitol Police officer who fought off the rioters died the next day. One hundred and forty other officers were injured. Four officers who responded to the riot later committed suicide.
Norm Pattis, a lawyer who represents three Proud Boys and the leader of the Oath Keepers, a militia group, rejected the idea that blanket leniency would lead to an increase in political violence.
“Our politics have always been violent,” Mr. Pattis said, referring to events ranging from the Civil War to the protests of the 1960s. “And so a riot of a few hours at the Capitol is going to justify years, decades behind the bars? For some people this is disproportionate and, in my opinion, simply disgusting.”
“WE NEED TO BE ACCOUNTABLE”
Two police officers who were beaten while trying to hold back the crowds said the pardons were a chilling sign that loyalty to Trump is now more important than the rule of law.
“It’s outrageous,” Michael Fanone, a former Washington Metropolitan Police officer, told Reuters. Fanone suffered a heart attack and brain damage after being beaten, doused with chemical irritants and shocked with a stun gun during the Jan. 6 violence. Fanone, 44, who spent 20 years in law enforcement, said the pardons would likely incite other supporters to violence, “because they believe Donald Trump will pardon them. And why wouldn’t they believe that? not ?”.
-Aquilino Gonell, a former Capitol Police sergeant who was injured defending the Capitol, said Mr. Trump’s pardons had nothing to do with righting an injustice. Mr. Trump and his Republican allies “no longer claim to have the moral high ground when they defend our system of governance, the Constitution and support the police,” he said.
Among those pardoned are more than 300 people who pleaded guilty to assaulting or obstructing law enforcement, including 69 who admitted to assaulting police with a dangerous or deadly weapon. Mr. Trump’s executive order commuted the sentences of 14 people convicted of serious crimes, including Stewart Rhodes, former leader of the Oath Keepers. Mr. Trump also pardoned others, including former Proud Boys leader Enrique Tarrio, who was sentenced to 22 years in prison for seditious conspiracy.
Nearly 300 rioters had ties to 46 far-right groups or movements, according to a study by the National Consortium for the Study of Terrorism and Responses to Terrorism, a network of academics based at the University of Maryland that tracks and analyzes terrorist incidents.
Heather Shaner, a Washington attorney who served as the court-appointed defense attorney for more than 40 of the defendants, called the pardons an attempt to whitewash history. “There needs to be accountability,” she said in an interview. “Only by recognizing the truth and providing accountability can we move forward.
Some experts on political extremism said the pardons would incentivize pro-Trump vigilantes to commit acts of violence in the belief that they will receive legal immunity if they act in Mr. Trump’s interests. “They will feel like they can do whatever they want,” Julie Farnam, who was deputy director of intelligence for the Capitol Police during the Jan. 6 riots, said of far-right groups. “They will feel like they can do it because there are no leaders in the United States trying to stop them,” said Ms. Farnam, who now runs a private investigative agency.
Couy Griffin, who was stripped of his post as a New Mexico county commissioner after being convicted of trespassing on Capitol grounds, said he had asked his lawyer to deny Mr. Trump’s pardon, as he appeals his conviction in federal court. In an interview, Mr. Griffin said he believed Mr. Trump’s enemies had distorted the truth about the Capitol riots.
“Was there violence against the police? Yes, there was also a lot of violence on the part of the police against the crowd,” he said, echoing a complaint frequents supporters of Mr. Trump.
DEATH THREATS AGAINST JURISTS AND POLITICIANS
Many Trump supporters praised the pardons on right-wing online forums. Some threatened those who supported the prosecution.
On the pro-Trump website Patriots.Win, at least two dozen people expressed hopes of executing Democrats, judges or members of law enforcement linked to the Jan. 6 cases. They demanded that lawyers or police officers be hanged, beaten to death, ground in wood chippers or thrown from a helicopter.
“Gather the entire federal judiciary into a stadium. Then have them listen and watch while the judges are beaten to death,” one wrote. “Cut off their heads and put them on stakes outside the Department of Justice.
Others called for Mr. Trump’s political critics to be killed after former House Speaker Nancy Pelosi, an influential Democrat, called the pardons an “outrageous insult.” “If anyone managed to kill Pelosi, I would consider them a hero,” wrote one Patriots.Win commenter. Another wished that Liz Cheney, the Republican who defied Trump by leading the Congressional investigation into the violence, would be “hung.”
One of the most famous rioters, Jake Angeli-Chansley, who became known as the “QAnon shaman” for wearing a horned hat to the Capitol, took to the social media platform rejoice after grace. Sentenced to 41 months in prison in 2021, he was released in 2023.
“NOW I’M GOING TO BUY MOTHAFU*KIN GUNS!!! I LOVE THIS COUNTRY!!! GOD BLESS AMERICA!!!”
