‘There’s Not A Darn Thing Anybody Can Do’: Rash Of Jan. 6 Pardons Will Mean Trouble, Former Prosecutor Says
HuffPost
No president before has pardoned people who were “essentially his co-conspirators in crime," one legal expert said.
If you take Donald Trump at his word, one of his first acts when he’s back in the White House will be to grant pardons to rioters who attacked the U.S. Capitol on Jan. 6, 2021.
A key question is whether Trump would issue pardons on a case-by-case basis or grant a blanket pardon to any and every Jan. 6 defendant regardless of the severity of their charges or conduct.
Trump has only told reporters that he will move “quickly” to review “everything” and has hedged when pressed on whether he will forgo pardons for particularly violent offenders. During an interview on “Meet the Press” earlier this month, reporter Kristen Welker asked Trump if even those rioters who pleaded guilty to assaulting police would be pardoned. Trump replied that these people “had no choice.” It was not clear whether Trump meant they had no choice but to plead guilty and strike a deal with prosecutors or whether he meant they had no choice but to act as they did that day.
Trump’s attitude toward Jan. 6 rioters has always been empathetic. He has called them “patriots” and “political prisoners.” Just this October, he referred to Jan. 6 as a “day of love” — despite over 140 police officers being assaulted and the multiple deaths connected to that day.
Four of Trump’s supporters died, including Ashli Babbitt, 35, of California, a U.S. Air Force veteran shot by a Capitol Police officer while she was trying to breach a window in the Speaker’s Lobby. Roseanne Boyland, 34, of Georgia died of a methamphetamines overdose, and although she was trampled by rioters, medical examiners determined her cause of death to be “acute amphetamine intoxication.” Kevin Greeson, 55, of Alabama suffered a heart attack while standing with Trump supporters outside of the Capitol. Benjamin Phillips, 50, a Pennsylvania resident and the founder of a pro-Trump website, Trumparoo, died of a stroke.
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