Trump frees violent January 6 attackers

President Donald Trump on Monday granted clemency to nearly 1,600 people who joined in the January 6 attack on Congress that he himself caused.

Hours after returning to office, Trump announced he was giving “full, complete and unconditional” pardons to nearly all “individuals convicted of offenses related to events that occurred at or near the United States Capitol on January 6, 2021.”

Trump also announced commutations of prison sentences for the handful of January 6 convicts not given full pardons—14 top members of the far-right Oath Keepers militia and Proud Boys—freeing them from lengthy prison sentences.

These actions mean that Stewart Rhodes, the Oath Keepers leader who was sentenced to 18 years in prison following his conviction for seditious conspiracy and other crimes for planning violence on January 6, is a free man.

Trump also freed Enrique Tarrio, the Proud Boys leader who was serving a 22-year sentence following his conviction for seditious conspiracy and other crimes for his role in planning the violence on January 6.

Tarrio was the “the ultimate leader, the ultimate person who organized, who was motivated by revolutionary zeal,” US District Judge Timothy Kelly, a Trump appointee, said in sentencing Tarrio in 2023 after applying an enhancement for terrorism.

Trump himself faced felony charges for allegedly conspiring to use a fake elector scheme as a means to remain in power in 2021. His election victory in November caused special counsel Jack Smith to drop that case to comply with a Justice Department policy against prosecuting a sitting president.

In pardoning or commuting the sentences of his insurrectionist supporters, Trump has used his newly restored power to extend to his followers the impunity the presidency gives to him. More broadly, Trump is using the clemency authority to try to erase the stain of his botched self-coup attempt as he continues to insist that he actually won in 2020.

In informal, rambling remarks that followed his mostly scripted inaugural speech Wednesday, Trump picked up where he left off four years ago. He called the 2020 election “totally rigged,” claimed the January 6 attack was largely nonviolent, and called the people prosecuted for their role in it “patriots” and “hostages.”

That language signaled that Trump’s clemency grants, more than just a legal effort, are part of a renewed campaign to force government institutions and the American public to accept his false and self-serving version of reality.

Trump’s sweeping actions Monday seemed to be a rejection of suggestions by advisers that he deny clemency to rioters who were convicted of violent acts and that he consider clemency applications on a case-by-case basis.

The pardons came after an inaugural speech in which Trump promised to restore “law and order” in American cities.

Earlier on Monday, Joe Biden issued preemptive pardons to public figures who Trump has threatened to use the Justice Department to target. These included former Joint Chiefs of Staff Chairman Gen. Mark Milley, Dr. Anthony Fauci and members and staffers of the House January 6 committee, as well as Washington, DC, and Capitol police officers who testified before the committee about the attack. Minutes before leaving office, Biden also issued pardons for members of his family: his brothers James and Frank, his sister Valerie, and their respective spouses. Those pardons follow Biden’s widely criticized pardon last month of his son Hunter, who was convicted last year of lying about his drug use and, through a guilty plea, of tax evasion.

“My family has been subjected to unrelenting attacks and threats, motivated solely by a desire to hurt me—the worst kind of partisan politics,” Biden said in a statement released Monday while Trump’s inauguration ceremony was underway. “Unfortunately, I have no reason to believe these attacks will end.”

Trump—who, during his first term, engaged in a historically unprecedented effort to use his pardon power to reward supporters and to undermine investigations into his own alleged crimes—had the chutzpah to crticize Biden’s pardons on Monday.

Taylor Budowich, Trump’s incoming deputy chief of staff, tweeted that Biden’s pardons “will go down as the greatest attack on America’s justice system in history.” (Budowich personally earned nearly $20,000 from helping to organize protest activity on January 6, I reported last year.)

Trump seemed especially irked that Biden’s pardons covered the two Republican lawmakers who served on the January 6 committee, both of whom he described as tearful. Former Rep. Liz Cheney is a “crying lunatic,” Trump said, adding that former Rep. Adam Kinzinger “is always crying.”

Trump repeated a false claim that the January 6 committee had destroyed evidence gather in its investigation. The committee’s final report, transcripts of hundreds of depositions and other investigative material remain available online—a reminder that Trump, for all his powers, cannot erase the history of January 6. His clemency actions, in fact, deepen his connection to that event.