With the stroke of a pen on Monday, President Donald Trump completely upended the Justice Department’s four-year effort to arrest, prosecute and punish the people who attacked the US Capitol on January 6, 2021.
It was the largest criminal probe in American history, those who heeded Trump’s call in 2021 to come to Washington and try to stop Congress from certifying his 2020 election defeat. More than 140 police officers were injured during the seven-hour siege, which also led to the deaths of four Trump supporters in the mob and five police officers.
The presidential proclamation Trump signed in the Oval Office said this action of mass clemency “ends a grave national injustice that has been perpetrated upon the American people.”
Two brothers convicted for their roles in the attack on the US Capitol were the first of those pardoned to be released. Andrew Valentin and Matthew Valentin, who were each sentenced last week to two and a half years in prison, walked out of the DC Central Detention Facility on Monday night.
Here’s what to know about the pardons:
• Virtually all convicted pardoned: The proclamation Trump signed grants a “full, complete and unconditional pardon” to virtually everyone who was convicted of January 6-related crimes.
• Commutations for leaders of extremist groups: Trump’s proclamation singled out 14 members of far-right extremist groups, like the Proud Boys and the Oath Keepers, who received commutations instead of pardons. This means they’ll be freed from federal prison but won’t have their civil rights restored, as happens with a full pardon, which paves the way for a recipient to get back their right to own a gun or their right to vote.
• Dismissing all pending prosecutions: Trump’s proclamation directed about 300 pending cases to be dismissed.
• Trump went further than anyone expected: During and after the 2024 campaign, Trump kept the door open to pardoning every defendant. But he also hedged at times. In recent weeks, Trump’s allies signaled that pardons would be restricted to nonviolent defendants. But there was no “case-by-case” review, as Trump aides promised.
• He justified them with lies: Trump justified the pardons with the same series of lies and false claims that he has used for years to whitewash the violence, deflect blame and rewrite history.
Read more about the mass pardons.
