It Is Happening Every Day, Every Where
Even Republicans who once said violent rioters should be prosecuted to the fullest extent of the law declined to criticize the presidential clemency for violent offenders, saying it was time to move on.
More than 150 officers from the Capitol Police and the D.C. police were injured when a pro-Trump mob stormed the Capitol four years ago.
Two prominent far-right extremists with central roles in the Capitol attack, Enrique Tarrio of the Proud Boys and Stewart Rhodes of the Oath Keepers militia, have been set free.
President Trump made major policy moves immediately after taking office, withdrawing from major international agreements, promising steep tariffs and pardoning nearly all of the Jan. 6 rioters.
President Trump’s pardons in the Jan. 6 case abruptly ended the most complex investigation in U.S. history. It also raised questions about what he will do next against a department he has said is full of his enemies.
Dozens of people with ties to the Jan. 6, 2021, attack on the Capitol gathered outside the detention facility in Washington to celebrate Trump’s pardons of those convicted of crimes that day.
He issued formal pardons to more than 1,550 rioters charged with a wide range of crimes and commuted the sentences of 14 members of far-right groups.
The move, in effect, validated the far-right leader’s defiant claim that his criminal prosecution was a kind of political persecution.
The extraordinary pardons and commutations extended to those who committed both violent and nonviolent crimes on Jan. 6, including assaulting police officers and seditious conspiracy.
President Trump’s grant of clemency to those who assaulted the Capitol in his name four years ago clashed with his predecessor’s decision to shield from retribution those who had sought to hold him to account.