President Donald Trump’s decision to issue pardons to the violent insurrectionists who breached the Capitol on Jan. 6, 2021, isn’t only wildly unpopular with the electorate—but the move apparently caught many of Trump’s aides and supporters by surprise.
Two officials who worked on Trump’s transition told NBC News that the decision to pardon the more than 1,500 people convicted for their role in the violence was made mere days before Monday’s inauguration.
“He is who he is,” one person who worked on Trump’s transition team told the outlet. “Expectations are sometimes set as best as can be expected, and sometimes they change quickly.”
Throughout his presidential campaign, Trump repeatedly said that one of the first acts of his second term would be to free the people who were convicted of breaching the U.S. Capitol on Jan. 6 in his name. At one point, Trump said he’d consider issuing pardons on a “case-by-case” basis, suggesting that he might not be as lenient toward those who were found guilty of violent offenses. After all, 169 people pleaded guilty to assaulting police officers, five of whom later died.
But of course, Trump effectively left everyone convicted for their actions off the hook. On Monday, he issued roughly 1,500 pardons and commuted the sentences of 14 imprisoned insurrectionists, allowing them to go free. According to Axios, an adviser familiar with the pardon discussions said that “Trump just said: ‘Fuck it: Release ’em all.’”
While most Republicans are fine playing dumb and pretending like they didn’t truly understand the scope of Trump’s pardons, others were mystified by the president’s actions.
Newt Gingrich
Former House Speaker Newt Gingrich, a Trump ally, told NBC News that denying pardons to those who attacked the police officers who Republicans claim to care about “is a more defensible position and easier to support.”
“You have to wonder whether you really want to put people back on the street who haven’t paid their dues for having done those things,” he said.
Meanwhile, the Fraternal Order of Police, the largest police union in the nation which endorsed Trump’s latest presidential bid, issued a joint statement on Tuesday with the International Association of Chiefs of Police in which members slammed both the Biden and Trump administrations for pardoning or commuting the sentences of those convicted of killing or assaulting a police officer. Before leaving office, former President Joe Biden commuted the sentences of 37 death row prisoners, including at least two of whom had killed a police officer.
“Crimes against law enforcement are not just attacks on individuals or public safety—they are attacks on society and undermine the rule of law. Allowing those convicted of these crimes to be released early diminishes accountability and devalues the sacrifices made by courageous law enforcement officers and their families,” the statement said.
Part of what makes Trump’s leniency toward his supporters even more abhorrent is the fact that his vice president was seemingly just as surprised by it. In a Jan. 12 interview on “Fox News Sunday,” JD Vance said people who committed violence on Jan. 6, 2021 “shouldn’t be pardoned.”
Vice President JD Vance
Since then, though, it appears Vance has come around to the fact Trump is king, and his actions rarely match his words. NBC News reported that once it became clear Trump planned to issue sweeping pardons for those involved in the deadly attack on the Capitol, the entire administration, including Vance, quickly got on board.
“Everyone has been clear that we were looking at all the cases and the ultimate decision, which the Vice President ended up being a driving force behind, was more encompassing action,” a second transition official told NBC News. “The President ended up airing on leniency given how political and broken the process was.”
Trump, for his part, has defended his disgusting pardons, even going so far as to compare the rioters in prison to “hostages.” During a Tuesday press conference at the White House, he suggested that his imprisoned supporters had suffered enough behind bars.
“These people have already served years in prison and they’ve served them viciously,” Trump said. “It’s a disgusting prison. It’s been horrible. It’s inhumane. It’s been a terrible, terrible thing.”
More recently, on Wednesday, CNN reported that Trump administration officials are toying with whether to invite some of the convicts to the White House for a potential meeting and visit with Trump.
Predictably, Republicans are trying to justify Trump’s awful decision to pardon the insurrectionists by noting that Biden pardoned some members of his family just before leaving office. But the comparisons are of apples and oranges at best.
Biden’s last-minute preemptive pardons were controversial, but they were issued as a sort of protection to potential Trump administration targets who have not been indicted, let alone convicted, of a crime. Trump, on the other hand, moved to protect more than 1,500 people, many of whom were indicted, tried, and convicted of criminal wrongdoing.
While many of those who have now been set free have praised Trump’s move, it sets a foreboding tone for the rest of his presidency.
If this was truly a last-minute move by Trump, that would suggest that the next four years will be nothing more than him making a series of disastrous and potentially harmful decisions based on whims and vibes. And we’re all going to suffer the consequences.
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