Shortly after his inauguration as the US President, Donald Trump, has granted pardons to about 1,500 of his supporters who stormed the Capitol on January 6, 2021, in a bid to overturn the results of the 2020 election. Trump ordered that all pending criminal cases against Capitol riot defendants have been un-conditionally dropped.
Among those receiving a pardon was Enrique Tarrio, the former leader of the far-right Proud Boys, who was sentenced to 22 years in prison for leading a military-style assault on the Capitol.
Stewart Rhodes, the leader of another far-right group, the Oath Keepers, had his 18-year prison sentence commuted to time served. Both Tarrio and Rhodes had been convicted of seditious conspiracy
The president described the rioters as “hostages,” Trump said at a White House signing ceremony that he had granted “full pardons” to more than 1,500 defendants.
“We hope they come out tonight, frankly,” he said.
A total of 1,583 people were charged in connection with the assault on Congress by Trump supporters seeking to disrupt certification of Democrat Joe Biden’s election victory four years ago.
Trump has fulfilled his campaign promise when he repeatedly during his campaign exercise pledged to grant pardon to those who took part in the attack, calling them “patriots” and “political prisoners.”
The US president who’s his first term ended under the controversial Capitol assault, and he has repeatedly downplayed the violence of January 6, even going so far as to describe it as a “day of love.”
It was reported that over 140 police officers were injured in hours of clashes with rioters wielding flagpoles, baseball bats, hockey sticks and other makeshift weapons, along with Tasers and canisters of bear spray.
- The Riot incident -
The Capitol hill assault came on the hell of a flaming speech delivered by then-president Trump to tens of thousands of his supporters near the White House in which he repeatedly claimed that he won the 2020 race.
Consequently, he then encouraged the crowd to take back their mandate by marching to the Congress to demand such.
Accordingly, Former Democratic House Speaker Nancy Pelosi condemned the pardons, calling them “an outrageous insult to our justice system and the heroes who suffered physical scars and emotional trauma as they protected the Capitol.”
“It is shameful that the president has decided to make one of his top priorities the abandonment and betrayal of police officers who put their lives on the line to stop an attempt to subvert the peaceful transfer of power,” Pelosi added.
Trump was charged by special counsel Jack Smith with conspiring to overturn the results of the year 2020 general election.
However, the case never made it to trial until this day, and ahead of his inauguration was dropped under the Justice Department’s policy of not prosecuting a sitting president.
Trump’s magnanimously yesterday after swearing-in as president granted a “full, complete and unconditional pardon” to everyone convicted of involvement in the riot and ordered the immediate release of those still in prison.
He commuted to time and served the sentences of nine members of the Oath Keepers, including the founder Rhodes. Five members of the Proud Boys also had their sentences commuted.
In a related development, President Biden also before exiting office yesterday, issued pre-emptive pardons to former Covid advisor Anthony Fauci, retired general Mark Milley and close family members to shield them from “politically motivated prosecutions” by the Trump administration.
Biden gave similar pardons to former Republican lawmaker Liz Cheney and other members of the congressional committee that investigated the Capitol attack.
Just minutes before Trump was sworn in, Biden announced he was issuing pardons to his brother James Biden, James’s wife, Sara Jones Biden, his sister Valerie Biden Owens, Valerie’s husband, John Owens, and his brother Francis Biden.
“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. “Unfortunately, I have no reason to believe these attacks will end.”
AFP
