WASHINGTON — Donald Trump incurred no legal consequences for his Jan. 6, 2021, attempted coup, and now members of his mob who assaulted police officers in his name that day will no longer be held accountable, either.
Within hours of swearing to protect and defend the Constitution in his oath of office, Trump on Monday freed from federal prison hundreds of his followers who had been convicted of beating, kicking, punching, bear-spraying and otherwise attacking police officers to help him remain in power, despite having lost reelection — what authoritarian experts describe as a “self-coup.”
“Authoritarianism is the conversion of rule of law into rule by the lawless. He needs the people with those skill sets on his side,” said Ruth Ben-Ghiat, a history professor at New York University.
Added Boston College historian Heather Cox Richardson: “He is sending a signal that he will take care of anyone who will fight for him.”
As Trump signed an order granting the mass release, he repeated falsehoods about the Jan. 6 criminals — who by their actions meet the definition of domestic terrorists ― that he and his allies have been spreading for three years, including that prosecutors were imprisoning an elderly grandmother merely for protesting.
He continued to lie to reporters about Jan. 6 in the White House Tuesday, even claiming that some jurisdictions in this country do not prosecute murderers, while maintaining that his supporters had been punished too harshly.
“They’ve served years in jail and their lives have been ruined,” he said, and then added that he thought that the Proud Boys and Oath Keepers militia groups — members of which have been convicted of violence or seditious conspiracy ― were actually great patriots. “These were people who actually love their country.”
In fact, the vast majority of protesters who merely trespassed that day and did not engage in violence were not charged with felonies and did not receive jail time.
A HuffPost analysis of sentencings of the Jan. 6 defendants tracked by The Prosecution Project found that the median sentence for 534 nonviolent offenders whose cases had been completed was zero time behind bars, and that the average sentence was 4.3 months.
In contrast, the median sentence for 319 defendants convicted of violent offenses was 30 months in prison, with an average of 38 months.
They included Trump supporters like Andrew Taake, who received 74 months at a federal prison in Beaumont, Texas, for pepper-spraying police officers and hitting one with a metal whip. And Christopher Alberts, who got 84 months in the federal prison in Milan, Michigan, for carrying a loaded 9mm pistol onto Capitol grounds and hitting police officers with a wooden pallet. And Steven Cappuccio, who got 85 months in the federal prison in Forrest City, Arkansas, after beating an officer with such ferocity, including with the officer’s own baton, that he held his cellphone in his mouth so he could use both of his hands.
All three, and hundreds more, won their freedom with full pardons, meaning they will have all their rights restored, including the right to own firearms. Trump also released from prison 14 members of the Oath Keepers and Proud Boys, but used commutations, not pardons, so their criminal records will not be expunged.
How many precisely are to be freed is unclear. The Bureau of Prisons, now under Trump’s control, did not respond to a HuffPost query. However, the Department of Justice earlier this month reported that about 600 individuals had been charged with assaulting or impeding a police officer, and a database created and maintained by NPR showed 418 cases of assault and violence.
Trump White House aides did not respond to HuffPost queries asking why Trump released violent criminals who attacked police officers, a group that Trump claims to support.
The comprehensive pardons contradicted assurances from Vice President JD Vance, who on Jan. 12 told Fox News: “If you committed violence on that day, obviously you shouldn’t be pardoned.”
Trump himself suggested the same in interviews before the November election when he said those who “were out of control” on Jan. 6 or who were “radical, crazy” would not get pardons.
Amanda Carpenter, a former Republican aide in the Senate who is now with the Protect Democracy nonprofit, said that his release of those willing to attack police officers and commit other violence on his behalf should not have been surprising, given that Trump repeatedly honored them at his rallies.
“He’s been signaling he’s going to do this since he started his 2024 campaign,” she said.
Trump could have issued a blanket pardon for all the eventual Jan. 6 offenders in the two-week span between Jan. 6 and the day he left the White House for his South Florida country club. At the time, though, he was focused on avoiding potential criminal charges against himself, as well as a Senate conviction on his impeachment for inciting the attack. Had enough GOP senators joined with Democratic colleagues, they could have banned Trump from federal office forever.
Instead, Trump read a speech, prepared with input from White House lawyers, in which he scolded the insurrectionists and promised that they would be prosecuted. “To those who broke the law, you will pay,” he said.
His own lawyers claimed during his impeachment trial in the Senate that Trump did not approve of what happened. “He, like the rest of the Country, was horrified at the violence,” they wrote in a Feb. 8, 2021 brief.
While the House impeached Trump on a bipartisan vote, not enough Senate Republicans voted with Democrats to convict Trump with the necessary two-thirds majority. Within weeks, Trump was back to claiming that the 2020 election was stolen from him — a lie he continues to repeat to this day.
Later in 2021, Tucker Carlson, at the time Fox News’ top rated primetime host, produced a lie-filled series that claimed the FBI had staged the Jan. 6 attack as a “false flag.” Trump subsequently began claiming that his followers had done nothing wrong that day and were “hostages” and “political prisoners.”
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A year later, Trump participated in a recording of the Star-Spangled Banner with a number of his supporters who were in the District of Columbia jail. Trump read the Pledge of Allegiance aloud and his words were interspliced with the inmates’ singing. A Just Security analysis of the jail roster that day found that 17 out of the 20 were either charged with or had already been convicted of assaulting a police officer.
By the time he had won the GOP nomination in spring 2024, most elected Republicans had already bought into the propaganda version of Jan. 6. Trump’s release of those ready to engage in violence to do his bidding was merely the closing chapter, Carpenter and other democracy advocates said.
“Pardoning the Jan. 6 rioters was his first and most important campaign promise,” she said. “What this does is create a license of more political violence in the future.”