'Won’t work': Expert reveals why Trump pardoning 'army of thugs' won’t help achieve key goal

21 January

President Donald Trump didn't waste any time pardoning nearly all of those charged and convicted in connection with the January 6, 2021 insurrection. Now, one legal expert is arguing that despite the pardons, the newly minted president isn't any closer to achieving the central goal of the pardons.

In a statement posted to the official White House website, Trump wrote that he intended to correct "a grave national injustice that has been perpetrated upon the American people over the last four years" and that he hoped to begin "a process of national reconciliation." But Lawfare editor-in-chief Benjamin Wittes — also a senior fellow in governance studies at the Brookings Institution — countered that for all of Trump's bluster about "injustice," Trump's pardons won't do anything to change the national narrative about the attack that's already been cemented into American consciousness.

"He has put the power of the United States federal government behind the patent lie that the prosecution of Jan. 6 rioters was an injustice requiring remedy, which is all part of the larger lie that the prosecution of Trump himself was political," Wittes wrote. "And that–in turn–is all part of the still-larger lie that the 2020 election was stolen from him."

"But if the long-term goal is to erase the ugly history of what happened in 2020 and 2021, to change Trump from the perpetrator into the victim of the crime, it won’t work," he continued. "Pardoning those convicted, after all, doesn’t erase the records of what they pled to. It doesn’t erase the evidence presented to juries about what they did. It doesn’t erase their own copious social media boasting about it all. Just as Trump can’t change the truth about his own conduct by getting elected and getting the cases against himself dropped and projecting his own goals for weaponization of the Justice Department onto the prior administration, he cannot change either the truth about what his followers did—though he can wipe out the consequences for them."

Wittes opined that Trump hoped to create an "army of thugs" to have at his disposal, emphasizing that creating such an army was the "whole purpose" of the pardons. And he made the case that "using clemency to help those who commit crimes" in the name of the MAGA movement is "exactly what a mafia don does to protect his people." But Wittes maintained that "the truth about what happened on January 6" will remain unchanged despite Trump's best efforts.

"It will live in the records of the Jan. 6 Select Committee. It will live in the records of the prosecutions, including of Trump himself. It will live in a whole lot of journalism, both from the time and in retrospect—including on this site," he wrote. "It will live in the history books. And it will live in the memory of everyone who chooses not to suppress their memory for political reasons."

"In the end, a president can frustrate justice, but he can’t change the truth," he added.

Click here to read Wittes' Lawfare essay in its entirety.

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