Trump Grants Sweeping Clemency For Jan. 6 Political Prisoners

President Donald Trump pardoned nearly every defendant charged with crimes related to the Capitol riot on Jan. 6, 2021 after his predecessor issued pre-emptive pardons for the rest of the Biden family moments before leaving office.

The freshly inaugurated president delivered the pardons in one of his first acts upon his triumphant return to the Oval Office. The executive order granted “full, complete, and unconditional pardons” to roughly 1,500 people and commuted the sentences of another 14. The total number of defendants charged is 1,583, according to The Hill.

“What they’ve done to these people is outrageous,” Trump said at the White House as he signed a pile of orders across the Resolute Desk.

While the pardon eliminates convictions for those who already served jail time, Trump ordered any remaining prisoners still incarcerated to be released immediately just hours after he characterized his inauguration at the Capitol as “liberation day.”

“We hope they come out tonight, frankly,” Trump said. “They’re expecting it.”

Federalist Editor-in-Chief Mollie Hemingway reported on X Monday night that Ed Martin, an attorney for Jan. 6 defendants, will replace Washington, D.C.’s zealous prosecutor of the demonstrators, Matthew Graves, as U.S. attorney for the district.

Democrats condemned Trump’s pardons for those charged with crimes related to the riot four years ago, including Rep. Nancy Pelosi, D-Calif., whose failures to secure the Capitol as House speaker at the time was the focus of a congressional report in 2022.

“The President’s actions are an outrageous insult to our justice system and the heroes who suffered physical scars and emotional trauma as they protected the Capitol, the Congress and the Constitution,” Pelosi said on X after she skipped Trump’s inauguration.

According to the 2022 review of Pelosi’s culpability in the turmoil, the House speaker had repeatedly refused to accept reinforcements from the National Guard in the days before the riot. Pelosi was reportedly concerned about the “optics” of federal troops in the capital after she criticized their deployment amid the riots over George Floyd the prior summer. Then-candidate Biden had celebrated the riots in 2020 as a “historic movement for justice.”

The pardons for Jan. 6 defendants came after former President Joe Biden granted wide-ranging pardons for five family members just minutes before relinquishing office. Biden also gave pre-emptive pardons to the former members of Pelosi’s Select Committee on Jan. 6, retired Gen. Mark Milley, and Dr. Anthony Fauci during his final hours as president. Former Rep. Liz Cheney, who lost her congressional seat in Wyoming over her work as vice chair of the committee, said in a statement with Rep. Bennie Thompson, D-Miss., who chaired the panel, that the pardons were accepted “not for breaking the law but for upholding it.”

Cheney had recently been recommended to face criminal charges from the Justice Department by a congressional review of the committee’s conduct.

Tristan Justice is a national correspondent for The Federalist and the co-author of “Fat and Unhappy: How ‘Body Positivity’ Is Killing Us (and How to Save Yourself).” He has also written for The Washington Examiner and The Daily Signal. His work has also been featured in Real Clear Politics and Fox News. Tristan graduated from George Washington University where he majored in political science and minored in journalism. Follow him on Twitter at @JusticeTristan or contact him at [email protected]. Sign up for Tristan’s email newsletter here. Buy “Fat and Unhappy” here.