Trump’s promise to pardon Jan. 6 rioters guarantees 'likelihood of more violence': experts

If elected to a second term, former President Donald Trump has openly pledged to issue pardons and apologies to hundreds of rioters who stormed the US Capitol on January 6, 2021. Multiple experts are arguing that doing so is a near sure-fire recipe for an escalation in political violence.

Counterterrorism expert Tom Joscelyn, who served as a senior staff member to the House Select Committee on the January 6 attack, told NPR on Thursday that Trump charging "full speed ahead" as the "pro-Jan. 6 candidate" is a harbinger of a much darker chapter in American politics if the former president is victorious in November.

"By pardoning an untold number of people who committed violent acts, the likelihood of more violence certainly goes up," Joscelyn said.

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As of January, the FBI has arrested approximately 1,200 people connected to the deadly 2021 insurrection that resulted in five deaths and hundreds of injuries. Of those arrested, the Department of Justice has secured roughly 900 guilty pleas and convictions. According to NPR, charges for those convicted range from "breaching the Capitol building to assaulting police, obstructing Congress, bringing a gun onto Capitol grounds and seditious conspiracy."

Trump's promise to pardon his supporters who attacked the US Capitol has been well-documented. In 2022, he told one interviewer that he would be considering "full pardons with an apology to many" rioters, and has made numerous posts on his Truth Social platform in support of the insurrectionists. One post from 2023 showed a screenshot on X (formerly Twitter) from a supporter who wrote that "cops should be charged and the protesters should be freed."

American University assistant professor and author Jeffrey Crouch said "there's not much that Congress or the courts can do to stop the president from granting clemency," and cited the example of then-President Andrew Johnson pardoning a swath of Confederate officers and soldiers in 1865, despite them being charged with treason for waging war against the country.

"The purpose of the pardon is both to make people feel they're gonna get away with past crimes," New York University historian Ruth Ben-Ghiat told NPR. "but just as scary is that it's designed to make future violence more possible, because people will feel they won't pay any consequences."

READ MORE: Here's everything you need to know about how the Constitution's insurrection clause affects Trump

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