« Highlighting the successes and limited availability of veteran treatment courts | Main | Crack is still wack for thousands in Florida still carrying unconstitutional convictions from 1980s »
December 8, 2024
Prez-Elect Trump reiterates pledge to grant Jan 6 pardons on "first day" in office
Prez-Elect Donald Trump conducted a new interview during which, according to this NBC News piece, he discussed his pardon plans for January 6 defendants. Here is the start of the article:
President-elect Donald Trump said he is looking to issue pardons to his supporters involved in the attacks on the U.S. Capitol on Jan. 6 as soon as his first day in office, saying those incarcerated are “living in hell.”
Trump’s comments, the most sweeping he’s made since winning the 2024 election, came during an exclusive interview with “Meet the Press” moderator Kristen Welker. He also said that he will not seek to turn the Justice Department on his political foes, and warned that some members of the House committee that investigated the Jan. 6 attack “should go to jail.” On his first day in office, Trump said he will bring legal relief to the Jan. 6 rioters who he said have been put through a “very nasty system.”
“I’m going to be acting very quickly. First day,” Trump said, adding later about their imprisonment, “they’ve been in there for years, and they’re in a filthy, disgusting place that shouldn’t even be allowed to be open.” Trump said that there “may be some exceptions” to his pardons “if somebody was radical, crazy” and pointed to some debunked claims about anti-Trump elements and law enforcement operatives infiltrating the crowd.
At least 1,572 defendants have been charged and more than 1,251 have been convicted or pleaded guilty in the attack. Of those, at least 645 defendants have been sentenced to periods of incarceration ranging from a few days to 22 years in federal lockup. There are roughly 250 people currently in custody, most of them serving sentences after being convicted. A handful are being held in pretrial custody at the order of a federal judge.
Trump didn’t rule out pardoning individuals who had pleaded guilty, including when Welker asked him about those who had admitted to assaulting police officers. “Because they had no choice,” Trump said.
Asked about the more than 900 others who had pleaded guilty in connection to the attack but were not accused of assaulting officers, Trump suggested that they had been pressured unfairly into taking guilty pleas. “I know the system. The system’s a very corrupt system,” Trump said. “They say to a guy, ‘You’re going to go to jail for two years or for 30 years.’ And these guys are looking, their whole lives have been destroyed. For two years, they’ve been destroyed. But the system is a very nasty system.”
The crimes that have been charged range from unlawful parading to seditious conspiracy in the sprawling Jan. 6 investigation that included rioters captured on video committing assaults on officers, and who admitted under oath that they’d done so.
If Trump makes good on this pledge to grant pardons to the vast majority of Jan 6 defendants on this first day, he will set all sorts of modern clemency records. These clemency statistics assembled by DOJ's Office of the Pardon Attorney show it has been half a century since a President has granted more than a few pardons at the start of a term in the Oval Office, and it has been a full century since a President had done more than 1200 pardons in his entire tenure. (Notably, these DOJ data leave out mass clemencies like Prez Biden's mass marijuana possession pardons; if the Trump does Jan 6 pardons en masse, I am not quite sure how best to run the numbers.)
And, of course, as I have covered in recent posts here and here, lots of folks are urging Prez Biden to go big on clemency in his final weeks in office. Biden statement in support of his most recent clemency decision suggests, when it comes to his child, he largely agrees with Trump's view on the "very nasty" federal criminal justice. But since I dooubt, especially in this arena, that Biden is capable of "acting very quickly," we may have to keep waiting to find out if any other people's children might Biden's grace.
Excitingly, any and everyone interested in these issues still has time to register for the online event, "President Biden’s Pardon Legacy and the Future of the Federal Clemency Power," being hosted on December 10 by the Drug Enforcement and Policy Center (DEPC) at The Ohio State University Moritz College of Law. More details and a list of panelist can be found on this event page.
A few of many recent related posts:
- How might Prez-Elect Trump operationalize his promise to pardon January 6 defendants?
- Fascinating account of concerns and chatter over Prez-Elect Trump's pardon plans for Jan 6 defendants
- Prez-Elect Donald Trump already getting notable clemency requests amid lots of expectations
- Another report on how pardon possibilities are impacting Jan 6 prosecutions
- Imagining better clemency traditions than turkey pardons and lame-duck frenzies
- Register for "President Biden’s Pardon Legacy and the Future of the Federal Clemency Power"
December 8, 2024 at 11:18 AM | Permalink
Comments
He should not give pardons to those who assaulted police officers. "They had no choice" is BS. Of course they had a choice. They could have chosen not to assault the police.
Posted by: William Jockusch | Dec 8, 2024 11:28:43 AM
But Mr. Jockusch, many people assaulted the cops in the riot that forced Trump out of the Oval Office and resulted in the burning of a church. Biden Admin didn't go to ends of earth to prosecute there. I agree with you, and I don't want to see pardons of those people, but they've been singled out, and that's a problem.
Then there's this: "A handful are being held in pretrial custody at the order of a federal judge." Doug, you cannot be ok with that?
Posted by: federalist | Dec 9, 2024 10:45:58 AM
Amen.
Posted by: Da Man | Dec 9, 2024 10:48:17 AM
I’d need a lot more details to be able to intelligently weigh in, federalist, but I think it fairly common for those charged with serious crimes to be held in pretrial custody. (This is not an area I study, but I have seen data suggesting nearly 1/2 of all federal defendants spend time in pretrial custody.) That is an additional aspect of the pressures to plead guilty that Trump mentions. Are you against all pretrial custody, federalist? I am not, especially if the defendant has any violent criminal history.
Posted by: Doug B | Dec 9, 2024 11:16:08 AM
Doug, when I look at the riot outside the WH, and look at the lack of prosecution, the pretrial detention looks like politicized justice.
Posted by: federalist | Dec 9, 2024 11:29:28 AM
You did not answer the question, federalist: Are you against all pretrial custody? Or are you saying you are only against it when it looks "politicized"?
Notably, a bunch of mass murders have not been subject to federal death penalty prosecutions --- eg, Eric Rudolph --- so would you support Joe Biden clearing federal death row on the claim that other death sentences look "like politicized justice"? That was, of course, his stated rationale for pardoning his son.
More broadly, I expect lots and lots of people are going to claim all federal prosecutions in the next administration "politicized." Meanwhile, I genuinely view all state and federal prosecutions --- and all exercises of prosecutorial discretion and prosecution priorities and all decliniation decisions --- as "politicized" at least to some degree because we live in a democracy where elected and appointed officials can and should exercise discretion be somewhat responsive to the will of the people subject, of course, to the rule/limits of law. I am always keen for more clemency for those who merit grace, but assertons of "politicized justice" often sound to me more like a rationalization rather than a justification in most cases.
Posted by: Doug B | Dec 9, 2024 11:48:59 AM
Federalist,
I guess it may come down to a question of what one considers to be "singled out".
To me, the best comparison is with nonpolitical cases. And in nonpolitical cases, people who assault the police are generally prosecuted, as they should be. So I don't consider the fact that this was done to J6 rioters unfair.
I'm not familiar to the riot you are referring to. But assuming it happened, the decision not to prosecute in that case would have been unfair. And that unfairness has now been handled in the most appropriate way, namely the election.
I still think that pardoning J6 rioters who assaulted police is a bad idea. The recent precedent, based on your own example, is that someone unfairly showed lenience to rioters who assaulted police was voted out. And now Trump is promising to show lenience to rioters who assaulted police. I don't like it.
Posted by: William Jockusch | Dec 9, 2024 12:16:23 PM
Of course, I am not against all pre-trial custody. What I am against is justice based on the politics of the defendants. And it is very clear that the J6 defendants have been singled out.
Posted by: federalist | Dec 9, 2024 12:38:09 PM
Federalist writes that "it is very clear that the J6 defendants have been singled out." Well, this was a most singular event: the first time citizens broke into and vandalized the White House and assaulted guards protecting it.
Posted by: anon12 | Dec 10, 2024 4:38:42 PM
I think you mean the Capitol, anon12.
Posted by: Doug B | Dec 10, 2024 4:47:05 PM
Doug B, thanks for the correction. Even Homer nods.
Posted by: anon12 | Dec 10, 2024 5:10:57 PM
Anon12 shows his ignorance in more ways than one. First of all, there's that whole WH thing. Second, anon12 lumps every defendant in with the vandalization and the assaults. Finally, everyone knows that some of the so-called rioters were waved into the Capitol by police. Finally, we've all seen the news reporting of various and sundry Code Pink (et al.) protests inside the Capitol, and those guys got tickets.
I just love DOJ fanboys like anon12.
Posted by: federalist | Dec 10, 2024 5:40:13 PM
