In an interview with Time magazine on Thursday, December 12, President-elect Donald Trump said he would immediately pardon “most” of the people who have been charged for the Jan. 6, 2021, Capitol riot. The once and future commander-in-chief’s promise follows sitting President Joe Biden’s record-breaking spree of pardons and sentence commutations – and the release of a report from the Office of the Inspector General that revealed more than a dozen FBI confidential informants participated in the Jan. 6 riot.
Trump Tackles Jan. 6
“It’s going to start in the first hour,” Trump said. “Maybe the first nine minutes.” The interview was a part of his feature in the magazine, which named him the 2024 Person of the Year. President-elect Trump has long promised to grant clemency to those locked up over Jan. 6, who he has often referred to as political prisoners.
Court filings indicate that many defendants have asked judges to delay proceedings (like trials and sentencing), but most requests have been denied. Indeed, the Justice Department is still, to this day, arresting and charging new suspects. Trump has not given any specifics on who will get clemency, but he did promise to pardon “most” defendants.
Will He Break Biden’s Record?
The very same day, President Biden commuted about 1,500 sentences for people who were released early from prison during the pandemic and who served at least a year of home confinement afterward. He also granted 39 pardons. “America was built on the promise of possibility and second chances,” Biden said in a statement. “As president, I have the great privilege of extending mercy to people who have demonstrated remorse and rehabilitation.”
Prior to Thursday, the record for most acts of executive clemency in a day belonged to Biden’s former boss, Barack Obama. Shortly before leaving office in 2017, Obama granted clemency to 330 people in one day. At present, there are an estimated 1,572 people charged criminally in federal court over the Jan. 6 incident. If Trump pardons them all, he could even take Biden’s newly won record.
What’s Good for the Goose …
Not long before this, Biden exercised that same “great privilege” to pardon his son, Hunter Biden, clearing him of any responsibility for potential crimes committed over an entire decade. The president had originally promised not to do precisely this. But, of course, that was while he was still running for re-election. Once he dropped out and Trump beat his successor, Kamala Harris, all that changed. Why keep that promise when there’s nothing left to lose?
It would appear, however, that this mercy doesn’t extend as far as the Jan. 6 riot. Biden’s Justice Department still calls it an “assault on democracy” and continues to pursue what has been described as one of the largest and most complex prosecutions in the department’s history.
That stance is, perhaps, made just a bit more awkward by the release of Inspector General Michael Horowitz’s report on the FBI’s handling of confidential sources and intelligence leading up to the riot. According to the report – also released Thursday, Dec. 12, a big day in political news, apparently – 26 “confidential human sources” were present in the nation’s capital on Jan. 6, 2021, with four entering the Capitol building and another 13 breaching a security perimeter to enter the grounds.
Just three of those informants were actually tasked with being there to “report on domestic terrorism subjects” in DC. The rest showed up on their own, and, of course, none of them were authorized to break the law or entice anyone else to do so. Interestingly enough, though more than 1,500 people have been charged and cases are still being brought, none of those 17 FBI informants who broke the law without authorization have been arrested or charged – even though their participation was known well enough to make the IG’s report. One of them was even reimbursed for travel despite not being tasked with attending the electoral certification, the report states.
For those who have suffered incarceration, prosecution, or just general harassment and fear the other shoe might drop at any moment, the first hour – or those first nine minutes – can’t come fast enough.
