The first major act of President Donald Trump’s second term was granting an Inauguration Day pardon to all the rioters and insurrectionists who stormed the U.S. Capitol on Jan. 6, 2021. As dreadful as it was a year ago that Trump excused and blessed mass street violence against the constitutional order, the decision looks even worse today, as unleashing authoritarian government violence against the people becomes the defining agenda of the Trump administration.
While many Jan. 6 offenders have gone on to commit new violent crimes, making a mockery of the concept of clemency, the key planners of Trump’s Jan. 6 coup and its apologists have become critical actors in the administration.
Trump rewards fanatical political loyalty with maximum legal impunity.
The behavior and intent of the administration should not be missed: Trump rewards fanatical political loyalty with maximum legal impunity. If you commit crimes in his name, he might forgive your other crimes. These are the tactics of a gangster state running a political protection racket from the Oval Office.
Although Trump campaigned on pardoning Jan. 6 offenders, even those close to him did not anticipate that Trump would go as far as he did. Eight days before the sweeping pardons were announced, Vice President-elect JD Vance laid out a “very simple” standard for clemency. “If you protested peacefully on Jan. 6,” Vance said, you should be pardoned. He went on: “If you committed violence on that day, obviously you shouldn’t be pardoned.”
Soon, however, Vance had to scrap this morally intuitive approach because Trump ordered “full, complete, and unconditional” pardons or commutations for any acts occurring “at or near the Capitol building on January 6, 2021.” The brutality or lethality of offenses didn’t matter. Trump gave clemency to every single rioter and insurrectionist from that day — including the bloodiest cop-beaters, the most premeditated seditious conspirators and all of the extremists who crushed police officers in doorframes, sprayed chemicals into their eyes and drove stun guns into their necks.
This action essentially constituted the creation of a private Trump militia, ready to “stand back and stand by” for future political engagements and street violence.
By indiscriminately extending clemency to the mob he had incited on Jan. 6, Trump also wiped out centuries of practice and understanding about who deserves the extraordinary gift of presidential mercy. Before Trump, the pardon attorney in the Department of Justice scrutinized individual petitions and assessed whether offenders showed remorse and contrition, had made amends to their victims and were truly reformed and rehabilitated such that they no longer posed a danger to society. Experienced lawyers made recommendations based on the criminal records and actual personal changes made by the petitioner. When Trump sacked Justice Department pardon attorney Liz Oyer last year, he destroyed the remnants of that system based on justice and mercy — and turned it into a fascistic political game.
Trump’s Get Out of Jail Free card for anyone who went to battle for him on Jan. 6 was so expansive that it even offers hope to Brian Cole Jr., the suspect recently arrested for the attempted pipe bombings at the Democratic National Committee and Republican National Committee headquarters near the Capitol in early January 2021.
Like Trump’s other pardoned fighters, Cole is a strong Trump supporter and a Big Lie enthusiast who was apparently stirred to action by Trump’s ubiquitous appeals to “Stop the Steal.” Cole’s defense lawyer says there is no compelling legal or moral distinction between his client and the violent J6ers who received pardons, so presidential clemency should cover Cole, too.
Consider some of the vicious conduct that Trump’s sweeping pardon has already forgiven:
• Daniel Rodriguez repeatedly plunged a stun gun into the neck of Officer Michael Fanone as the mob yelled “kill him.” Fanone suffered a heart attack and traumatic brain injuries. Rodriguez received a 12-year sentence that Trump wiped away with a full pardon.
• David Dempsey stomped on officers’ heads and struck them with metal crutches in what prosecutors called “one of the most violent” attacks of the day. He was serving a 20-year sentence — until Trump gave him a full pardon.
• Patrick McCaughey III used a stolen police riot shield to crush Officer Daniel Hodges in a metal doorframe, leaving him trapped, bleeding and crying for help. A Trump-appointed judge called McCaughey the “poster child for all that was dangerous and appalling” about the Jan. 6 riot. He, too, was freed by Trump’s pardon.
Whether the Trump Justice Department, run by J6 conspiracy theorists and election deniers Pam Bondi and Kash Patel (at the FBI), will be sympathetic to Cole’s framing is not yet known. But the DOJ has already tried to stretch Trump’s broad pardon to make it cover completely separate and extraneous criminal conduct by members of the mob, including gun offenses. In November, Trump issued a second pardon to Daniel Edwin Wilson, a militia member who pleaded guilty to conspiracy to impede or injure a federal officer. Wilson had remained behind bars after Trump’s Inauguration Day pardon because Jan. 6 investigators searching his home discovered six guns and 4,800 rounds of ammunition, items he was barred from possessing because of three prior felony criminal convictions. The Justice Department has voluntarily dismissed separate gun charges against other Jan. 6 insurrectionists. The Justice Department initially took the position that the original pardon did not exonerate Wilson of this unrelated crime. But after receiving what it called “further clarity on the intent of the Presidential Pardon,” the department reversed itself. Its new reasoning was chilling: Police found the illegal weapons only because they were investigating Jan. 6 offenses, so the pardon should cover those separate firearms crimes too as fruit of the poisonous tree. (Would that logic apply also to murder and rape charges?) Trump-appointed District Judge Dabney Friedrich called this position “extraordinary” and rejected it in court. This is the backdrop to Trump pardoning Wilson a separate time for the independent gun charges. And using this same twisted logic, the Justice Department has voluntarily dismissed separate gun charges against other Jan. 6 insurrectionists. The consequences of this criminal permissiveness are — no surprise — more crime. A report by our House Judiciary Committee Democratic staff found that at least 33 pardoned rioters have faced new criminal charges since Jan. 6, 2021, and several have reoffended since receiving their pardons a year ago. Zachary Alam, whom a judge described as one of the “most violent and aggressive” rioters, was arrested for home invasion less than five months after Trump pardoned him. Another Jan. 6 defendant, John Banuelos, bragged in open court before his pardon arrived that he would never do time. “President Trump’s going to be in office six months from now, so I’m not worried about it,” he said. Nine months later, the self-styled untouchable insurrectionist was arrested on new charges of kidnapping and brutal sexual assault. Make no mistake: Trump owns responsibility for these new crimes, just as he owns the crimes committed in the course of his insurrection. But we cannot lose sight of the fact that the pardons have emboldened the president’s political foot soldiers to view themselves as beyond the law. Trump owns responsibility for these new crimes, just as he owns the crimes committed in the course of his insurrection. On the fifth anniversary of the Jan. 6 attack, pardoned rioters returned to the scene of their crimes on Capitol Hill and taunted police. Enrique Tarrio, the former Proud Boys leader who had been serving a 22-year sentence for seditious conspiracy, led a march retracing the mob’s steps from the Ellipse to the Capitol. The pardoned convicts carried signs reading “THANK YOU FOR OUR PARDONS TRUMP.” When asked if they had any regrets, Tarrio and other marchers said no, because they were not guilty of anything to begin with — and yes, of course, they would do it again. As the lead Democrat on the House Judiciary Committee, I’m fighting with our members every day to defend American constitutional democracy and freedom. Part of that work involves maintaining the public record of the attempted coup and violent insurrection that took place against the American constitutional order on Jan. 6. As we correct the profusion of lies and conspiracy theories still being pumped out about that day, we must also reckon with the damage that’s already been inflicted on the rule of law by Trump’s pardons and his continuing determination to reward political violence with legal impunity.
Rep. Jamie Raskin
Jamie Raskin represents Maryland's 8th congressional district in the House of Representatives. 
