‘Trump’s gonna pardon me’: Capitol rioters claim victory

Philip Sean Grillo participated in the storming of the Capitol on January 6, 2021. He repeatedly encouraged fellow rioters to “charge” as they entered Congress, and is seen on video claiming he was in the Capitol “to stop the steal” of the 2020 election from Donald Trump, who spread the lie that he was the real winner. He was prosecuted for multiple crimes and appeared in a federal court in Washington last month to hear his sentence. The judge sentenced him to one year in prison and sent him to jail. After hearing his sentence, while a guard handcuffed him, he defiantly proclaimed, “Trump’s gonna pardon me anyways.”

Like Grillo, hundreds of people who were prosecuted and convicted for their role on the Capitol assault are now declaring victory. Some of those whose movements have been restricted by court order, such as Christopher Belliveau, Cindy Young and William Pope, have requested special permits to be able to attend Trump’s inauguration on January 20. For them, it will be a great day. Their leader is not only regaining power, but has promised mass pardons for convicted rioters.

The fourth anniversary of the Capitol riot, which shook the foundations of American democracy, is marked by Trump’s victory in the November 5 election. On January 6, Congress will certify his victory, four years after his own supporters tried to prevent Joe Biden from being declared the winner following his victory in 2020.

Since his first campaign rally in Waco, Texas, in March 2023, Trump has been paying tribute to the rioters. That day, he opened the event with the song Justice for All, which features a choir of imprisoned insurrectionists singing the national anthem, with Trump himself reciting the pledge of allegiance. As the song played, giant screens showed images from January 6, 2021.

Trump, who said he saw a lot of “love” on the day of the Capitol attack, has repeatedly referred to the insurrectionists as “patriots” and to those imprisoned as “hostages” or “political prisoners.” In response to that message, President Joe Biden, then a candidate for reelection, took advantage of the third anniversary of the attack, a year ago, to criticize Trump for “glorifying,” rather than condemning, political violence and underscoring the risk it represented for democracy. Democracy, however, has returned Trump to power.

The president-elect has promised mass pardons, though he has said these will be considered on a case-by-case basis. “We’re going to look at each individual case, and we’re going to do it very quickly, and it’s going to start in the first hour that I get into office,” he said in an interview with Time magazine last month, at one point specifying that “I’ll be looking at J6 early on, maybe the first nine minutes.” He also said that the rioters “suffered greatly, and in many cases they should not have suffered.” Trump himself has escaped any criminal liability in the events by being elected president. He is, so to speak, the recipient of the very first pardon: the voters have forgiven him.

According to the Justice Department, more than 140 police officers were assaulted on January 6, 2021, including more than 80 from the Capitol Police and more than 60 from the Metropolitan Police. Five people died that day. The most recent tally shows that 1,572 defendants have been charged. There are 1,068 who have been sentenced for their criminal activity that day, including 645 sentenced to prison terms and another 145 who have been allowed to serve their sentence under house arrest. There are 133 sentences under review after the conservative-majority Supreme Court decided in June that the crime of obstructing an official proceeding does not apply to the assault on the Capitol (despite the fact that it obstructed the certification of Biden’s victory).

The longest sentence was 22 years in prison for Enrique Tarrio, president of the far-right militia Proud Boys, who was found guilty of seditious conspiracy. His lieutenant Ethan Nordean was sentenced to 18 years, the same as Stewart Rhodes, founder and leader of the far-right group Oath Keepers, a kind of paramilitary militia.

It remains to be seen whether those convicted of more serious crimes will also benefit from Trump’s clemency. Judge Amit Mehta, who sentenced the Oath Keepers leader, recently expressed concern about the matter. “The notion that Stewart Rhodes could be absolved is frightening and ought to be frightening to anyone who cares about democracy in this country,” he said on December 18 at a hearing in which he sentenced another member of the militia.

Joyce Vance, a Brennan Center researcher and professor at the University of Alabama, is highly critical of possible presidential pardons. “If Trump pardons January 6 rioters, he would be using the pardon power to erase an attack on Constitution and country,” she she writes in an article published this week.. “the January 6 defendants’ return would give a boost to the white supremacist and domestic terror groups many of them participated in before they overran the Capitol, and it would severely dampen the deterrent effect of our laws against future aggression.” Such a pardon, based not on granting mercy to nonviolent offenders but on rewarding political loyalists, “cloaked in the appearance of lawful authority, it would put the presidential seal on crimes that go to the heart of an attack on our democracy,” she argues. “By advertising his willingness to pardon the people who supported him rather than the Constitution, Trump is sending a message to the people he is counting on to support him this go-round: If they protect him, he will take care of them. It’s a message fit for a would-be authoritarian.”

Biden on Thursday decorated Liz Cheney, the Republican who served on the Congressional committee investigating the Capitol assault, “for putting the American people above party.” But the tables have turned so sharply that Biden’s team is now considering whether to grant Cheney a preemptive pardon to shield her from the persecution that Republicans are threatening her with.

Veteran Judge Royce Lamberth, who sent Grillo to jail a month ago, was aware that Trump may soon pardon him. “Everyone in this room, including Mr. Grillo, is aware that the president-elect has publicly contemplated pardoning people who participated in the Capitol riots at various points throughout his campaign.” Lamberth went on to say that when then-president Ronald Reagan appointed him 37 years ago, he swore an oath to uphold his obligations under the United States Constitution. “I will do my job as I’m bound by oath to do, and the president will do his. It’s a simple as that,” he said.

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