President Trump yesterday issued a sweeping grant of clemency to nearly all of the approximately 1,600 people charged in connection with the rioting in and around the Capitol on January 6, 2021. Shortly after being sworn in as the 47th President of the United States, Trump issued pardons to most of the defendants and commuted the sentences of 14 members of the Proud Boys and Oath Keepers militia, most of whom were convicted of seditious conspiracy. Trump also directed the Justice Department to dismiss “all pending indictments” against people facing charges for the riots.
While the pardons of many J-6 defendants were expected, the scope of Trump’s clemency was unknown until yesterday. The President even pardoned Enrique Tarrio, the former leader of the Proud Boys who is serving a 22-year prison term after being convicted at trial of seditious conspiracy and using violent force against the government. The pardons were as all-inclusive as anyone could imagine, and, predictably, the Axis is freaking out.
“These pardons suggest that if you commit acts of violence, as long as you do so on behalf of a politically powerful person you may be able to escape consequences,” said Alexis Loeb, who personally supervised many riot cases. “They undermine and are a blow to the sacrifice of all the officers who put themselves in the face of harm to protect democracy on Jan. 6.” The New York Times report stated in part,
Beyond the effect the pardons and commutations will have on the lives of those who received them, they also served Mr. Trump’s mission of rewriting the history of Jan. 6. Throughout his presidential campaign and after he won the election, he has tried repeatedly to play down the violent nature of the Capitol attack and reframe it, falsely, as a “day of love.”
Mr. Trump’s actions were in essence his boldest moves yet in seeking to recast his supporters — and himself — as the victims, not the perpetrators, of Jan. 6. By granting clemency to the members of a mob that used physical violence to stop the democratic process in its tracks, Mr. Trump gave the imprimatur of the presidency to the rioters’ claims that they were not properly prosecuted criminal defendants, but rather unfairly persecuted political prisoners.
As a legal matter, the pardons and commutations effectively unwound the largest single criminal inquiry the Justice Department has undertaken in its 155-year history. They wiped away all of the charges that had already been brought and the sentences already handed down while also stopping any new cases from moving forward.
Within minutes of Trump’s action, my Trump-Deranged sister, a former Justice Department lawyer, called me on the phone to scream about it.
Your Ethics Alarms Ethics Quiz of the Day:
“Is the mass pardon ethical in its scope and the message it conveys?”
There are three justifications for the pardons. First, that these were political prosecutions is beyond question. The episode was hyped by Democrats and the J-6 Committee as part of the effort to eliminate Trump as a political threat. It is questionable whether they could get a fair trial in Washington, D.C. Still, many of those tried and convicted committed violent attacks on Capitol police.
Second, that double standards were applied is indisputable: Black Lives Matter rioters who engaged in violence and other crimes as part of the George Floyd freak-out in 2020 were almost entirely unpunished, because those were “good riots,” despite their longer duration and the far greater damage they inflicted. Finally, President Trump, while committing no crime, still bears significant responsibility for triggering the rioting with irresponsible rhetoric following his election loss in 2020.
On the other side of the argument, it is also undeniable that this was a uniquely ugly and disturbing event, with an angry mob attempting to disrupt the process of certifying and completing a Presidential election by force and violence. Special crimes warrant special treatment.
Ethics Alarms 
Unethically broad, but without a question, the vast majority of the pardons were proper and therefore ethical.
The unjustifiable pardons don’t set a precedent about political violence that hasn’t already been set by the usual miscreant political party.
I recall a similar invasion of the capitol by protestors against I think the Kavanaugh confirmation hearing and exactly 0 people blinked an eye at those trespassers because there was no violence because they were literally allowed in to protest. So from the get go, one side’s protest is wildly protected while the other side’s protest is violently opposed.
Ethical, I honestly haven’t heard the total years the protesters waited in jail and served. I am very certain that the total dwarf’s the amount of time for the summer of love rioting. They spent millions of dollars and man years of effort. There was at least one suicide as a result 9f these convictions. There is no doubt that this was a hanging judge and jury exercise.
wonder how the Nuremberg trials compare as far as total punishment?
I would call it ethical and necessary. President Jimmy Carter issued a grand pardon for all the draft dodgers during the Vietnam War. President Ford pardoned Nixon. Both these pardons were controversial, and both were necessary for the country to move forward and turn the page on an ugly part of history.
The J-6 pardons have become inevitable after Joe Biden’s pardon of the J-6 committee. I also understood that all the records of the J-6 committee have been deleted / destroyed, making it impossible for Congress to subpoena these records. I wonder if this is even legal, as the company I worked for has to retain all emails for 7 years by law. Given these actions and Joe Biden’s pardon in general I think the left is estopped from criticizing the pardons of the J-6ers.
It would be good for the country to lay the matter of the 2020 election and the events of J6 to rest, and focus on the future of the country.
Second.
I’d also add the pardons were inevitable after the non-response to all the George Floyd really violence. And Trump winning the election.
I’d say Ethical in Principle but in practice too far-reaching to truly be in service of Justice-with-a-capital-J, which is the point of the Pardon Power in the first place.
Protesters: Yes, absolutely. Their rights were violated.
Criminals who committed violent acts apart from protesting: No. Justice is better served by letting these people have their day in court–and if they’ve already had it, by standing by the results. Note however that this should be tempered by a recognition that some of these people probably didn’t get a FAIR trial, in which case I think a pardon may be justified on a case-by-case basis. But that’s not what we got.
–Dwayne
Senator Mike Lee of Utah apparently told Glenn Beck on Beck’s show this morning that only 2 of the pardoned protestors were released last night (1/20), and that DC jail staff had indicated that they had no plans to release any additional pardoned protestors. I’d agree with @Dwayne N. Zechman’s split decision as to the blanket pardons of all J6 protestors, but DC jail staff refusing to release pardoned protestors (if true) is clearly unethical.Sincerely,Catherine McClarey
I will extend a smidgen of benefit-of-the-doubt to the jail staff. While they clearly should not be holding anyone who’s been pardoned, I can understand them wanting official documentation naming each individual who should be released before releasing anyone.
They could be putting themselves in a HUGE pile of difficulty if they were to mistakenly release someone who wasn’t supposed to be released.
This is the problem with blanket pardons: It’s always a big question-mark as to who is actually affected and who isn’t.
–Dwayne
A pardon in government refers to:
A pardon is a governmental decision to absolve an individual for a criminal conviction, often times freeing him from all or part of the punishment imposed at sentencing. Pardons are typically granted by the President, or by individual state governors, usually to absolve individuals, but may be granted, in certain circumstances, for groups of people. Federal pardons are granted by the President of the United States, and each state’s law dictates with whom the power to grant state pardons lies. To explore this concept, consider the following pardon definition.
Definition of Pardon
The forgiveness of an offense
The release from penalty for an offense
To make an allowance or to excuse from an offense
To release a person from liability for an offense
There is no “pre-emptive” pardon statute.
By pardoning his family (including Hunter) as well as Fauci, Cheney, etc., Biden admits that they are criminals and should have been punished.
It’s true that they were:
a) political prosecutions;
b) a rejection of due process;
c) designed for purely partisan political effect without serious regard for actual justice.
People charged with minor violations sat in jail for tens of months and even years awaiting trial, an outcome the Justice Department knew full well would happen. In this case, the process became the punishment, and dragging them before the most biased judge and jury pool in the entire nation outside of Manhattan, San Francisco or Chicago was a transparent abuse of due process. No way were they going to get a fair trail even if they ever got around to seeing a jury.
The prosecution of the seditiou+s conspiracy cases were novel and untested applications of the law stretching it well beyond its intent. The sentences in almost all cases, for both serious and less serious crimes were astonishing, even unjust in their severity.
No one will argue that the people involved should not have been punished at all, but a fair system would’ve tried them quickly, granting venue changes when practical and lawful if for no other reason than to prevent misdemeanor defendants from serving long stretches untried and with no quick prospect of trial. A fair system would’ve recognized the tainted jury pool at minimum. It’s too much to ask that judges demand themselves held to a similar standard, I guess.
This entire affair was such a vile abuse of our legal system that it makes justice in these cases impossible. The commutations and pardons are therefore entirely ethical, if for no other reason than to stop the egregious abuse of the legal system for purely partisan purposes that was not only ongoing, but scheduled to continue indefinitely.
No doubt the riot is a black mark on our history, and worthy of deep and sincere condemnation. But no matter how ugly it was, it pales in comparison to the massive damage our legal system suffered at the hands of partisan prosecutors, judges, and juries in the name of “justice.” Even the pardons and commutations add to the damage to our institutions no matter how necessary they were. This is a case of ethics zugzwang — there are simply no good outcomes.
I don’t see how we ever recover from it, either.
Glen, your response represents my opinion on the matter.
My view stems from the fact that few people have seen the evidence against the leader of the Proud Boys who was in Baltimore at the time. Given that I have an equal reason to believe that he is guilty as charged as I have to believe he was being railroaded I must give the benefit of the doubt to the defendant. That is damage this DOJ and the District Courts have done to those of us who want to put our trust in the system.
As for others, if there is video evidence of assaults on the police then pardons are unwarranted. However, depending on the degree of assault commutations may be in order when evaluated against similar sentences for equivalent assaults on police officers. Simply being a Capitol police officer does not merit enhanced punishments.
We can add the fact that the conservative justices’ homes were picketed ( a felony) and Schumer’s words (you will reap the whirlwind) were even more incendiary than Trumps on January 6 and nothing was done. Code Pink routinely disrupts hearings and nothing is done and I recall a Senator being accosted in an elevator by women forcefully demanding additional investigations into Kavanaugh’s behavior because of Blasey Ford’s allegations. That precipitated a delay in his confirmation as a Justice longer than the election certification delay in the House on January 6.
Chris wrote:
My view stems from the fact that few people have seen the evidence against the leader of the Proud Boys who was in Baltimore at the time.
There is a lot of suspect “evidence” surrounding some of the more serious crimes not related to assault, and a lot of legal sleight of hand to get like-thinking judges and juries to go along.
The DOJ knew this, and they knew that the DC Court of Appeals would mostly pass on holding these kangaroo courts to account. In fact, they counted on it to get the most mileage out of their sentences no matter what they actually thought of the quality of the evidence they used. It only had to convince those who were already in the bag.
The only way to make it even close to right (as if it could be either way) was to burn the whole thing down, rick, cot and tree.
I can’t recall the name of the Senator being accosted in the elevator, preventing the doors from closing making escape impossible, but I do remember the person accosting him: The Honorable Senator from Hawaii, Mazie Hirono. The person accosted could’ve been Justice Kavanaugh. What I am absolutely clear about was how stunning her behavior was.
An inexact quote, but not a paraphrase: “Men should just do the right thing for a change and just sit down and shut-up.”
If Hirono has a husband, perhaps it would be merciful to start a GoFundMe to pay for his divorce attorney.
It was senator Jeff Fluke from Arizona. I recall there were protesters in the elevator.
“Special crimes warrant special treatment.”
Yeah, like “hate crimes.”
The often unremarked upon but well-established aspect of the J6 debacle is that it was entirely preventable had only ten percent of yesterday’s security measures been put into place beforehand. Adequate security measures would not only have safeguarded the Capitol building, but would have eliminated a lot of the face to face contact between protesters and police that ended up as assault. The only fatal injury was to an unarmed female veteran who was shot in the head by an apparent incompetent (who has also been pardoned). The kangaroo court J6 Committee added its antics, then Biden added the final salt to the wound with his last minute pardons of the Committee members as though it was the Biden justice department investigators who would be coming into power. They know what they did and fear it would now be done to them.
One of my more moderate Republican friends called to lecture me that “two wrongs don’t make a right.” I said, “No, but when you admit that your side was wrong, then ‘my side’ is justified in restoring balance, even if you think that’s wrong.” Pardoning essentially all of the defendants was not an ideal response but it wasn’t an ideal situation. And again, Pelosi and Schumer more or less let it happen through their inaction.
Time to move on. Lots to do to continue preserving and restoring the republic.
One more thing, in all jurisdictions of which I am aware, defendants are only released from custody upon receipt of a release authorization signed by a judge. In my state it’s called a mittimus. The mittimus, once received, starts the out-processing procedure. Nobody I know just ushers defendants out the door without paperwork.
Destroying all the records of the J-6 Committee pretty much tells you what you need to know about the legitimacy of its dealings. The plan was to unjustly try, convict, and sentence all those people in biased, kangaroo trials…and then destroy the only evidence that any of the convicted could use for any kind of appeal. That’s why I would land on the “these pardons are ethical” side of the scales.
But I hate this whole “pardon” process. It reeks. Like nearly everything Democrats defile, it has been turned into a partisan weapon. And if I look back, I’ll bet some Republican C-i-Cs have played fast and loose with it as well. If anything, no one should be pardoned, unless it’s for a crime that was NOT committed. We should instead allow Presidents to commute especially unjust or outrageous sentences for the already-incarcerated. But even that – in light of President Biden’s actions for those on death row – is now tainted.
As Jack proposed yesterday, I would be in favor of an Amendment that greatly restricts Presidential powers to pardon.
So who decides if someone is innocent?
A judge and jury…not the President. Again, the President should have the (very restricted) power to commute sentences.
President Biden pardoning members of Congress before any charges were filed, before a trial, before a verdict, and before sentencing feels eerily like a breach in the separation of powers.
The Innocence Project has shown that there should not be absolute faith in judges and juries.
The democrats and their minions, from blue city mayors, to Pelosi, to, at the last, SloJo himself, set this up as inevitable if Trump won. They showed little concern for the rule of law, legal niceties, or equal justice in 2020 or in the intervening years, not only in this case, but in many others.
Is this a messy and not altogether even-handed action on Trump’s part? Yes.
Is it righteous justice? Also yes.
I think this post on X deserves its own Ethics Alarms post… https://x.com/DineshDSouza/status/1881567651526500389
Yikes. I had forgotten about this guy. Great…I’ll have to do some thinking about that one…
As many of you already know, I’m not a fan of pardons in general.
I have been outspoken about not issuing a pardon to any January 6th rioter that physically attacked a police officer(s) during that riot, unfortunately I wasn’t consulted before President Trump issued these pardons. I think those that approve of pardoning the violent rioters that physically attacked police officers are engaging in unethical rationalizations.
My opinion regarding issuing a pardon for the January 6th rioters that didn’t engage in physical violence against police officers is based on the fact that rioters across the USA have NOT been prosecuted for similar actions if they were not acts of violence against police officers, so this is a true “shoe on the other foot” case for me. There IS a clear legal precedence to pardon because of how other rioters were treated a few years ago, many of the January 6th rioters were politically persecuted and thrown in jail because of their political views when they should have gotten a simple ticket for their actions. Yes I’m fully aware that that is essentially a tit-for-tat rationalization but legal precedence is a VALID legal argument for pardons even if it is a tit-for-tat rationalization and even if I disagree with pardons.
Pardons are completely out of my control. It’s done, it’s over with, and complaining about it doesn’t change a thing. As I have done with the other pardons issued by President Biden over the last few months, I’m letting it go. To dwell on it is futile.
Reasonable Prediction: I’m still not a fan of pardons and the massive number of pardons issued by President Biden and President Trump is very likely going to backfire in a bad way down the road.
I think President Trump, morally and ethically, is doing the right thing in pardoning the protesters. Were there acts committed that should warrant fair and reasonable prosecution? Yes. Were many, if not most, of the prosecutions unfair and purely political? Also yes. How is this any different than nearly every other action of the justice system?
If President Trump had not done blanket pardons and instead tried to take a fair and reasonable look at each case, would the left and the media applaud his actions and rethink their positions about him and his policies?
The rub is, for too many, there are no objective moral or ethical standards in politics or life in general. The only lens is that of power, either wielding it against or denying its use by your enemies. Everyone knows the game is rigged, unfortunately it’s the only game in town.
Maybe when I retire I’ll write that dystopian novel about how our society has devolved into everyone aligning with one political party or the other, existing to earn “get out of jail free” cards by doing whatever work the party asks.
Some objections have been made against the pardons using the statement that two wrongs do not make a right. However in the justice system not all wrongs are equally wrong. Having the guilty go free is a wrong. However convicting the innocent is a much bigger wrong. Also errors in the process of getting to a verdict are seen as more serious than actually letting a guilty man go free, and therefore verdicts can be overruled by an appeals court on technical grounds. It is therefore of paramount importance that the justice system works in fair and unbiased way, with many protections of the innocent against the massive power of the state. One of the safety valves in this system is the pardoning power of the President.
Under the Biden administration the DOJ, FBI, DHS have become massively politicized, resulting in selective prosecution, and massive overcharging. There was also a strong political motive behind these prosecutions to forward a a narrative that the events at J6 were an equal treat to the USA as the events at 9/11, with as goal to delegitimize Trump, his supporters and the GOP. This has created the impression that the USA is moving to a two-tier justice system where supporters of the left and supporters of Donald Trump were treated differently.
The J6 pardons can be regarded as a clear signal, and a first step to the depoliticizing of departments dealing with law enforcement such as the DOJ. This is one other reason why I think these pardons are necessary and ethical.
Second, that double standards were applied is indisputable: Black Lives Matter rioters who engaged in violence and other crimes as part of the George Floyd freak-out in 2020 were almost entirely unpunished, because those were “good riots,” despite their longer duration and the far greater damage they inflicted.
Do any of you remember this?
https://www.reuters.com/article/us-minneapolis-police-protests/fires-burn-near-white-house-in-violent-u-s-protests-idUSKBN2370HH/
I am on record writing that the Capitol rioters deserve the same fate as these rioters.
The pardons virtually guarantee that.
A no-frills analysis from Ann Althouse (no discussion of ‘garner’ anywhere):
“The Biden administration went big and then Trump went big. Biden could have shown mercy and aimed to bring Americans together, but he chose to be as punitive as possible. And this is after so much tolerance and forgiveness was shown to the Black Lives Matter rioters, to those crossing the border illegally, and to his political cronies and family matters. In that light, I have nothing negative to say about Trump’s sweeping magnanimity.”
She took the words right out of my mouth.
I just saw this and was going to post it in the comments. Beat me by 15 minutes!