Capitol attackers pardoned | Three federal judges denounce Trump’s decision

(Washington) Three federal judges on Wednesday condemned the pardon granted by new President Donald Trump to people found guilty of the assault on the Capitol, seat of Congress, on January 6, 2021.

“No pardon can change the tragic truth of what took place on January 6, 2021,” at the temple of the legislative power in Washington, thundered in a comment on the order dropping charges against a rioter, the federal judge from the capital of the United States, Tanya Chutkan.

President Trump’s decision Monday evening “cannot erase the blood, the excrement, the terror that the mob left behind” nor “can repair the breach in America’s sacred tradition of peaceful transition of power,” he said. protested the magistrate in writing.

Barely inaugurated on Monday, Mr. Trump signed an executive order at the White House pardoning some 1,270 people, whom he described as “hostages”, convicted of the assault on the Capitol during the certification four years ago of Joe Biden’s victory.

Added to this are 14 members of the far-right Oath Keepers and Proud Boys movements, whose sentences were commuted to prison time already served.

Since then, dozens of acting prosecutors in Washington have dropped charges against defendants still awaiting trial, which police officers and elected officials have called a “betrayal.”

Judge Chutkan is known for having presided over investigative hearings for former special federal prosecutor Jack Smith who was investigating, until the re-election of Donald Trump on November 5, his attempts to reverse the results of the lost presidential election. in November 2020.

Mr. Smith, appointed by the Biden administration, dropped all prosecutions and resigned since it is customary for the Justice Department not to prosecute a new sitting president.

Two other federal judges in Washington, who had presided over trials of Congressional attackers, also had to validate the dropping of charges on Wednesday. While strongly condemning these pardons.

Judge Beryl Howell thus swept away any factual basis for dropping the charges, contesting what President Trump deemed to be a “grave national injustice inflicted on the American people”.

The magistrate denounced “impunity”, a “dangerous prospect” that “behavior contrary to the law would recur in the future” and an “attack on the rule of law”.

Finally, her colleague Colleen Kollar-Kotelly also estimated that erasing a legal proceeding and pardoning the attackers “will not change the truth of what happened on January 6, 2021”.

She was delighted that “thousands of videos, trial transcripts, verdicts and judicial comments will be preserved for the future”.

So much “immutable” data which constitutes the truth”, she concluded.