“Violence will be rewarded”: Legal experts say Trump’s Jan. 6 pardons send a clear signal
With the president Donald Trump By pardoning and commuting the sentences of about 1,500 defendants on January 6, former Justice Department officials warn he is sending a signal that he will pardon anyone who acts in his name.
On his first day in office, Trump signed an executive order pardoning supporters, including those who stormed the U.S. Capitol just over four years ago. convicted of violent crimes and assaults against police officers that day. The amnesty paves the way for the release of perpetrators of violent crimes and leaders of these groups Right-wing extremist groupslike Enrique Tarrio, the Proud Boys leader who was convicted of seditious conspiracy and released from prison Monday evening.
“This is a big one” Trump He said while signing the pardon. “Hopefully they come out tonight, honestly.”
In addition to the pardon, Trump also specific Longtime GOP congressman and “Stop the Steal” activist Ed Martin, as the new interim US Attorney for Washington, D.C., instructed the Department of Justice to drop the 470 ongoing criminal cases against the defendants on January 6, raising serious questions about the independence of prosecutors. . Go ahead.
Dennis Vann, a former Justice Department official who now teaches at Columbia University, told Salon that the blanket pardon is comparable to one issued by President Andrew Johnson. Thousands Confederate officials in 1866.
“The pardon power, as a historical power, is often exercised in political ways. “When you pardon someone, you inherently send a message that some federal prosecution or some crime wasn’t so bad,” Fann said.
Fann noted that the January 6 pardon is distinct from other forms of pardons because those convicted on January 6 were storming the Capitol with the goal of keeping Trump in power and overturning the results of the 2020 election. Trump’s pardon sends a signal that anyone working to achieve their goals, Fann said. Political policy will be protected from legal consequences.
“I don’t think anything is off the table. If you say, ‘I’m willing to push police officers and possibly beat them up so that my preferred political candidate takes office,’ even if that’s not the outcome if the political process goes through, you’re sending a message that we’re going to have to,” Phan said. Don’t care about the consequences as long as we win.”
Fann went on to say that the pardon was a symptom of a shift among Republican officials regarding their view of the Justice Department’s independence from the president.
“In terms of the big picture, I think modern Republicans have a very different view on whether independence is a virtue or not,” he said. “It’s one of those things that maybe 20 years ago you would have brought up and they would have said, ‘Of course we want it to be independent.’
But now, Fann added, “There are a lot of contemporary Republicans, especially in the Department of Justice [Clarence] Thomas’s world, he believes that everything should be controlled by the president.
“This pardon in particular is very troubling because of the nature of the crimes,” Barbara McQuaid, former U.S. Attorney for the Eastern District of Michigan, told Salon.
“A pardon is a show of mercy or forgiveness. The people who used brute force to prevent Congress from certifying the election are political violence. A pardon sends a message that as long as you act in the best interests of the leader, political violence will be rewarded,” McQuaid said.
McQuaid said the pardons were “a signal that Trump will not respect the criminal justice process” and that she “wonders whether the Justice Department would be willing to take positions that Trump does not favor for fear that he will simply pardon defendants anyway.”
“I think Biden’s pardons for family members contribute to the perception that anything goes when it comes to pardons,” McQuaid said. “While Biden’s pardon may be troubling, it lacks a blanket disregard for political violence.”
Trump’s pardons will also have immediate material effects on those convicted of more serious crimes. While about half of those sentenced for a crime have served a prison sentence, many have either already served their sentence or have never been sentenced. The pardon will have a greater impact on those convicted of attacking Capitol Police officers on January 6, or militia members convicted of seditious conspiracy for their actions during or before the attack on the Capitol.
