'Frightening': Trump not ruling out pardoning January 6 participants convicted of sedition

28 December 2024

Prison sentences for convicted January 6 insurrectionists vary wildly from a few days to 22 years behind bars. And President-elect Donald Trump has notably been noncommittal when asked if he would include the more egregious offenders who stormed the U.S. Capitol nearly four years ago.

Rolling Stone's Tim Dickinson reported Saturday that the president-elect has so far not said definitively whether he would include those convicted of sedition in his promised pardons for January 6 participants — which he said could happen within the first nine minutes after his inauguration. When Dickinson asked Trump spokesperson Karoline Leavitt whether Trump was considering pardons for people like Proud Boys leader Enrique Tarrio, who is serving 22 years in prison for seditious conspiracy, she would only offer a cagey response.

"President Trump will make pardon decisions on a case-by-case basis for those who were denied due process and unfairly targeted by the justice system," Leavitt said.

According to NBC News, Attorney General Merrick Garland's Department of Justice has charged approximately 1,500 people in connection with the January 6, 2021 siege of the U.S. Capitol, and has secured more than 1,100 convictions as of November 2024. Over 600 of those prosecuted were sentenced to prison, including those convicted of seditious conspiracy like Tarrio and Oath Keepers founder Stewart Rhodes.

Federal statute defines seditious conspiracy as a felony crime in which two or more people conspire to "overthrow, put down, or to destroy by force the Government of the United States." Those convicted face up to 20 years in prison along with fines. When U.S. District Court Judge Amit Mehta was contemplating the concept of Rhodes being pardoned, he called it "frightening to anyone who cares about democracy." Rhodes compared himself to a jailed Soviet dissident during his sentencing hearing, with Mehta countering that he was no "political prisoner" but an "ongoing threat and peril to this country."

“No organization put more boots on the ground at the Capitol on January 6, 2021, than the Proud Boys, and they were at the forefront of every major breach of the Capitol’s defenses, leading the on-the-ground efforts to storm the seat of government,” U.S. Attorney for the District of Columbia Matthew M. Graves said in a press release issued after Rhodes' sentencing. “The leaders of the Proud Boys and the leaders of the Oath Keepers, who conspired before, during, and after the siege of the Capitol to use force against their own government to prevent the peaceful transfer of power, have now been held accountable.”

While Trump hasn't elaborated in detail on who will receive pardons for crimes committed on January 6, he has referred to defendants held in the Washington D.C. jail as "hostages" and "political prisoners." An analysis by New York University's Just Security publication found that the bulk of those defendants are serving sentences for attacking police officers. This includes defendants who were found guilty by a jury at the conclusion of their trial, along with defendants who entered guilty pleas of their own volition.

Click here to read Dickinson's full report in Rolling Stone (subscription required).

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