As President-elect Trump moves ever closer to becoming the 47th president of the United States, one of his campaign promises is starting to fester with the media and the political establishment. That promise is to pardon those caught up in the January 6 political show trials.
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Resistance is coming from the media, law enforcement, and the courts.
A recent Politico article alleged that judges were becoming “alarmed” over the prospect of Trump issuing large numbers of pardons of January 6 defendants.
In extraordinary but little-watched court proceedings since Election Day, judges appointed by presidents of both parties have emphasized the need for accountability for the people who stormed the Capitol in an attempt to derail the certification of Joe Biden’s 2020 victory. These judges have sounded dire warnings about the fate of the country if the lessons of the 2020 election go unlearned, and they are bluntly bracing for a turbulent start to the second Trump presidency.
One Trump-appointed judge has already warned the incoming president against a “blanket pardon” for Jan. 6 offenders. A judge appointed by Barack Obama said Wednesday that any effort to absolve a former leader of the Oath Keepers, Jan. 6 ringleader Stewart Rhodes, would be “frightening.” Rhodes is currently serving an 18-year prison sentence for seditious conspiracy, but Trump will have the power to wipe away that sentence on his first day back in office.
The judges’ clarion calls are becoming markedly more frequent and pointed as Trump’s inauguration nears. Since his 2024 victory, the federal trial courts in Washington have largely plowed ahead with Jan. 6 cases, even as defendants have tried to delay their cases by citing the possibility that Trump will soon pardon them. Judges have emphasized that his pardon power has no relationship to their obligation to mete out justice, and they have ignored, in Chutkan’s words, “whatever happens outside this courthouse door.”
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The sad fact is that many of the judges in the January 6 cases were complicit in turning the judicial process into part of the punishment, and they did so not out of a sense of justice but for the plaudits of their peer group and the ruling class in DC. There was literally no reason for any of the January 6 misdemeanor defendants to spend a single minute in jail, and yet they did. These prosecutions had much more in common with the Bloody Assizes and Soviet show trials than American jurisprudence. Their purpose was not to punish the guilty but to make examples of anyone challenging the government to deter others who might have that thought.
There is also a conflict between the “back the blue” impulses of most of MAGA country and some police officials. The new chief of the Capitol Hill police is complaining about the pardons indirectly:
[U.S. Capitol Police Chief J. Thomas] Manger declined to comment about President-elect Donald Trump’s promise to grant clemency to many of the nearly 1,600 Jan. 6 defendants, about 600 of whom were charged with felony assault or obstruction of police during a civil disorder. But in his first public remarks as chief of the 2,300-member department on the broader subject, he decried what he said was the wiping away of accountability for attacks against law enforcement.
“What message does that send? What message does that send to police officers across this nation, if someone doesn’t think that a conviction for an assault or worse against a police officer is something that should be upheld, given what we ask police officers to do every day?” Manger said after swearing in officers to help secure Congress’s certification of the 2024 election on Monday.
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I’d ask Chief Manger what message he thinks it sends to the public when one of his officers was promoted and received federal funds to improve security at his home and cash from a memorial fund after he murdered Ashli Babbitt in cold blood.
BACKGROUND:
If some disciplinary action had been meted out to this cretin and the Capitol Police who brutally beat Roseanne Boyland and the officials who lied about her cause of death (see EXCLUSIVE: Investigative Journalist Lara Logan Uncovers ‘The Rest of the Story’ on January 6 – RedState), I might care a lot more. If they just stopped lying about police officers being killed and hospitalized on January 6 or claiming that serving that day caused three police officers to commit suicide (why would that be?), I might be more charitable. Until then, I really don’t care about the morale of Capitol Hill police.
Finally, the media is going to lose its crap when the pardons hit. In fact, it is already starting.
This was the brutal reality of the Capitol riot that many want to forget. At times Mr. Trump suggests his pardons for Jan. 6 defendants won’t extend so far, and at times he’s less clear. He was pressed last month by an NBC host, who said that many of them “have pleaded guilty to assaulting police.” Mr. Trump’s reply was that a tough federal justice system gave them “no choice” but to plead out. Well, if they were innocent, they could have told a jury.
Pardoning such crimes would contradict Mr. Trump’s support for law and order, and it would send an awful message about his view of the acceptability of political violence done on his behalf. That’s what Jan. 6 was, make no mistake. Though the GOP had valid complaints about the loosening of voting procedures amid Covid, Mr. Trump lost in 2020 by three states and tens of thousands of votes. His advisers repeatedly told him there was no evidence of massive ballot fraud. Yet he insisted the election was stolen and that Vice President Mike Pence could halt the count on Jan. 6. That’s why he sent his supporters toward the Capitol.
The size of swirling crowds is tricky to estimate, but the acting head of the U.S. Capitol Police testified the month after Jan. 6 that the number converging on the building was “well in excess of 10,000.” The U.S. Attorney’s office in D.C. “generally has not charged” those whose only crime was trespass on restricted grounds, declining “hundreds” of cases, the FBI recently said. Press reports have suggested prosecutors believe that up to 2,500 people entered the Capitol.
The feds have charged about 1,600, including at least 590 accused of “assaulting or impeding law enforcement.” The alleged conduct varies widely, as do the sentences, which run from probation and fines to years in prison. As of early November, 1,028 cases had been fully adjudicated, with 645 resulting in incarceration and 143 home detention. The volume and range of cases make it difficult to generalize, and each individual court file tells a story.
As is typical, defendants who admit wrongdoing and take a plea deal can get less punishment than those who lack remorse, lie to a jury, and get convicted. Some Jan. 6 rioters were organized with the Proud Boys or other groups. Some were in the vanguard of breaching the building. Some reveled at the violence and intimated more to come. Rap sheets differ. Even if Mr. Trump restricts his clemency to nonviolent offenses, he’d do well to examine the details.
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Until some adequate explanation is provided on why Capitol Police invited protesters into the Capitol —
— and the role of federal agents and “confidential human sources” in escalating the conflict; I really don’t care what anyone did that day any more than the FBI and Department of Justice cared about American cities being burned during the mostly peaceful George Floyd memorial rioting and looting season.
I really hope President Trump sticks to his guns on his pledge. Everyone in jail or prison in connection with January 6 should be immediately released. If Trump wants a carve-out for “violent” actions during the demonstration, that’s fine as long as the Department of Justice is not involved in making that determination. Even so, those people who did not kill anyone in cold blood should get the same forbearance as a police officer who did.
Finally, even though our version of Roland Freisler, US Attorney for the District of Columbia Matthew Graves, has resigned, Trump’s pardons should be accompanied by a thorough purge of the Department of Justice and FBI of everyone associated with the January 6 prosecutions. Criminal prosecutions of staff at the DC Jail are a must.
It isn’t enough to free those unjustly caught up in a political prosecution that was orders of magnitude greater than any crime committed. The people who set this in motion need to be brought to justice.
This post was originally published on here
