The Free Press
The question of pardoning the pro-Trump rioters who attacked the U.S. Capitol on January 6, 2021, was “very simple,” according to Vice President J.D. Vance. Peaceful protesters should qualify, Vance observed on January 12, about a week before he took office, but “if you committed violence on that day, obviously you shouldn’t be pardoned.”
Other Republicans concurred. Alabama senator Katie Britt said: “I agree with J.D.” Attorney general–designate Pam Bondi told the senators at her confirmation hearing: “I will look at every case on a case-by-case basis.”
But that’s not what happened yesterday when Donald Trump signed an executive order granting pardons on a wholesale basis to hundreds of people who had pleaded guilty, been convicted, or were still being sought by the FBI in connection with the riot. They include 172 who pleaded guilty when charged with assaults on police.
We don’t mean that figuratively. Consider Robert Scott Palmer, who traveled to Washington, D.C., from Largo, Florida, joined the mob, and assaulted police with an empty fire extinguisher; a 4- to 5-foot wood pole; an orange traffic cone; a piece of scaffolding; and a wooden plank. He pleaded guilty in the face of overwhelming photographic and video evidence, and received a five-year sentence in December 2021.
Yet now Palmer—along with dozens of others who were convicted of violent offenses against police and others that day—is being released from prison and having his criminal conviction wiped out.
This gross misuse of presidential power should offend anyone who believes in the rule of law and respects those who wear the badge. Of the aforementioned 172 offenders, 69 pleaded guilty to assaulting police with a dangerous weapon—everything from bats, knives, and tasers to improvised weapons like stolen riot shields, fire extinguishers, and pieces of broken furniture. They did this to try to prevent the peaceful transfer of power.
More than 140 officers from the D.C. metro police and Capitol Police were ultimately assaulted that day. Injuries included burns, lacerations, broken ribs, and concussions.
For those who have opposed Trump but also hope that he will govern successfully in the public interest, these pardons are sobering. And for those who have supported Trump, this is a moment to recognize when he doesn’t measure up, morally or constitutionally, as he did not measure up on that day four years ago.
It is possible to hold two ideas in your head at once—especially on polarizing topics. And we do on the issue of accountability for the depredations of January 6.
The FBI and Justice Department pursued charges against many people whose offenses were relatively minor. In about 350 cases, in fact, the government charged people under a statute criminalizing the obstruction of official proceedings that the Supreme Court later said should not have applied.
Take New Mexican Couy Griffin, a former county commissioner and leader of “Cowboys for Trump,” convicted in 2022 of misdemeanor trespass because he went over three walls to get inside the Capitol on January 6—but did little else. He received a 14-day jail sentence, a year of supervised release, plus community service and $3,500 in fines and restitution. As a result, he’s been banned from holding public office in his home state.
When Trump and his supporters complained about how much more harshly January 6 defendants were dealt with than those who occupied downtown Seattle or otherwise protested violently during the Black Lives Matter summer of 2020, they had a point. Some cities in blue America have been softer on street crime in recent years than Merrick Garland’s Justice Department was on January 6.
What’s more, recent days have seen a different kind of pardon-power misuse by the departing president, Joe Biden, who issued preemptive get-out-of-jail-free cards to family members and political allies, ostensibly to insulate them from potential legal retribution by Trump. Biden did so despite wise warnings from Democratic leaders who said preemptive pardons imply guilt on the part of their beneficiaries or, as Senator Ruben Gallego cautioned, makes “Donald Trump’s case easier to pardon his January 6 supporters.”
But moral equivalency is a dangerous business. As the first Republican president once put it: “There is no grievance that is a fit object of redress by mob law.”
Political violence has no place in America. That is true whether such law-breaking is being carried out by thugs on the left or the right. We do not bow to mobs in this country. We do not accept efforts to subvert the democratic process. We believe in and are promised public order, ensured by the government, with due process assured to the accused. We air disagreements in democratic debate and abide by the will of the voters.
Alas, we live in an era where too many have lost sight of those basic democratic principles—we see it with those who celebrate Luigi Mangione as a folk hero and those who think that assaulting police officers is acceptable if the perpetrators support Trump.
Those who truly love this country should never make such excuses. The president of the United States just did.
Donald Trump, just sworn in as the 47th president, was reelected to be a wrecking ball to the Beltway elites. And while this populist moment feels unprecedented, host of our new show Breaking History Eli Lake says it’s not—the rebuke of the ruling class is encoded in our nation’s DNA. Listen to the first episode below or wherever you get your podcasts.