NYT (“Trump Grants Sweeping Clemency to All Jan. 6 Rioters“):
President Donald J. Trump, in one of his first official acts, issued a sweeping grant of clemency on Monday to all of the nearly 1,600 people charged in connection with the attack on the Capitol on Jan. 6, 2021, issuing pardons to most of the defendants and commuting the sentences of 14 members of the Proud Boys and Oath Keepers militia, most of whom were convicted of seditious conspiracy.
Mr. Trump’s moves amounted to an extraordinary reversal for rioters accused of both low-level, nonviolent offenses and for those who had assaulted police officers.
And they effectively erased years of efforts by federal investigators to seek accountability for the mob assault on the peaceful transfer of presidential power after Mr. Trump’s loss in the 2020 election. As part of his pardon order, Mr. Trump also directed the Justice Department to dismiss “all pending indictments” that remained against people facing charges for Jan. 6.
Sitting in the Oval Office, Mr. Trump said he hoped that many of the defendants could be released from prison as early as tonight.
“They’ve already been in jail for a long time,” he said. “These people have been destroyed.”
The pardons Mr. Trump issued — “full, complete and unconditional,” he wrote — will touch the lives of about 1,000 defendants accused of misdemeanors like disorderly conduct, breaching the Capitol’s restricted grounds and trespassing at the building. Many of these rioters have served only days, weeks or months in prison — if any time at all.
The pardons will also wipe the slate clean for violent offenders who went after the police on Jan. 6 with baseball bats, two-by-fours and bear spray and are serving prison terms, in some cases of more than a decade.
Moreover, Mr. Trump pardoned Enrique Tarrio, the former leader of the Proud Boys, who was serving a 22-year prison term after being convicted at trial of seditious conspiracy — a crime that requires prosecutors to prove that a defendant used violent force against the government.
A representative for Mr. Tarrio said he had been released from a federal prison in Louisiana and was expected to return to Miami, his hometown, by Tuesday afternoon.
CNN (“Trump commutes sentences of Proud Boys and Oath Keepers leaders as he pardons over 1,000 January 6 US Capitol rioters“) adds:
The “full, complete and unconditional” pardons extend to people who were convicted of some of the worst crimes committed the day of the Capitol attack.
That group includes individuals like Julian Khater, who assaulted US Capitol Police officer Brian Sicknick and later pled guilty to assaulting officers with a dangerous weapon; Devlyn Thompson, who hit a police officer with a metal baton; and Robert Palmer, a Florida man who attacked police with a fire extinguisher, a wooden plank and a pole.
More than 140 police officers were injured during the seven-hour siege, which also led directly and indirectly to the deaths of four Trump supporters in the mob and five police officers.
Late Monday night, two brothers convicted for their roles in the attack on the US Capitol were released from a DC jail, hours after Trump issued the sweeping set of pardons.
Andrew Valentin and Matthew Valentin, who both pleaded guilty in September to assaulting police and were each sentenced last week to two-and-a-half years in prison, walked out of the DC Central Detention Facility Monday night, according to Paul Ingrassia, who identified himself to reporters as the Trump White House’s liaison to the Justice Department.
“The first two January 6 defendants have been released,” Ingrassia told reporters gathered outside the jail. CNN previously reported that Matthew Valentin had tried to tear a baton from a police officer on January 6, and Andrew Valentin threw a chair at a police line.
[…]
About 55% of January 6 prosecutions are misdemeanor cases, with charges like disorderly conduct or trespassing, according to Justice Department data. For those convicted, the vast majority were sentenced to probation or a few months in prison and were already released.
Some defendants are elderly people who got caught up in the frenzy. Others went inside the Capitol for a handful of minutes but never attacked anyone or vandalized anything. Most have no criminal record. A large chunk of the people in the mob said they never intended to infiltrate the Capitol, let alone disrupt Congress’ certification of the 2020 election results. Some believe they were waved into the building by police.
This is shameful.
Once the dust settled on January 6, I began arguing that, rather than a simple insurrection—my initial instinct after watching the horror unfold on television and, indeed, that of Mitch McConnell and other prominent Republicans—it was a series of overlapping events. There was indeed a violent attempt to overturn a free and fair election, organized and instigated by white nationalist groups, with the groundwork laid by Trump and others on his team. But there were people who simply got caught up in a mob and others still, who were essentially tourists.
I’ve argued for treating these groups differently in terms of how they were prosecuted and punished. As best I can tell, that mostly happened. As is inevitable in a justice system run by humans, some judges and prosecutors treated like offenses more harshly than others.
To the extent Trump sees those who arrived in DC to attend his rally and then got caught up in the adrenaline as allies who have been prosecuted in a politically-motivated manner, I can at least see an argument for pardoning them so that they can resume productive lives without the stain of a felony conviction.
But it is beyond outrageous for the nation’s chief law enforcement officer to pardon men who planned a violent insurrection. It is an insult to the Capitol Police officers who were killed and injured as a direct result of their plot. To say nothing of the Members of Congress who feared for their lives as an angry mob came in to stop them from executing their sworn duty.
Alas, Trump gave every indication that he would pardon the nonviolent offenders On Day One. The only real shocker is that clemency extended to the Proud Boys and Oath Keepers.
