Trump’s Jan. 6 Pardon Promise Would Put Police-Assaulters Back On The Streets

WASHINGTON ― Andrew Taake pepper-sprayed police officers defending the Capitol on Jan. 6, 2021, and hit one with a metal whip. He is serving 74 months at a federal prison in Beaumont, Texas.

Christopher Alberts carried a loaded 9 mm pistol onto Capitol grounds that day and hit police officers with a wooden pallet. He is serving an 84-month sentence at the federal prison in Milan, Michigan.

Steven Cappuccio held his cellphone in his mouth so he could beat an officer using both of his hands, including with the officer’s own baton. He is doing 85 months at the federal prison in Forrest City, Arkansas.

All three will be back on the streets if Donald Trump, the man who incited them and some 2,000 others to attack the Capitol in the first place, follows through on his oft-repeated pledge to pardon the Jan. 6 insurrectionists.

“LET THE JANUARY 6 PRISONERS GO. THEY WERE CONVICTED, OR ARE AWAITING TRIAL, BASED ON A GIANT LIE, A RADICAL LEFT CON JOB,” Trump wrote on social media on March 7, 2023.

“It will be my great honor to pardon the peaceful January 6 protesters, or as I often call them, the hostages,” Trump said in a speech this past May. “There has never been a group of people treated so harshly or unfairly in our country’s history.”

Trump’s claims that a large number of “peaceful” protesters are being held behind bars, however, is demonstrably false.

A HuffPost analysis of sentencing data shows that in the vast majority of cases, the people serving substantial prison time are those who committed violent crimes that day. And conversely, the vast majority of those prosecuted for nonviolent offenses either never went to jail in the first place or had such short sentences that they are already out.

Of those serving a year or more in prison, a full 57% are there following a conviction in cases involving an assault on a police officer. In all, 83% serving a year or more were convicted of committing an act of violence.

All of which means that, with few exceptions, the only people Trump could release from prison with his pardons are those who attacked a police officer, possessed weapons or explosives, or were convicted of some other violent felony.

“People who will be pardoned will be the violent ones. That’s who’s left to pardon. … Those who went to jail were the most violent that day,” said Harry Dunn, a former Capitol police officer who was among the hundreds assaulted on Jan. 6.

In all, more than 140 members of the Capitol and the Washington, D.C., police departments were wounded by Trump’s followers that day. One died hours later and four others died by suicide over the coming months. Trump, though, has never acknowledged their injuries and deaths.

Trump’s aides, presented with HuffPost’s findings, would not address them directly, and instead referred to his comments to NBC News on the topic earlier this month in which he promised to start the pardon process on “Day 1,” would look at the cases individually but was inclined to pardon everyone except those who had acted “radical” or “crazy.”

But in that interview, Trump also provided indications that he was not particularly knowledgeable about the details of the prosecutions.

Trump, for example, said that Jan. 6 insurrectionists had been incarcerated “three or four years” in a “filthy, disgusting place that shouldn’t even be allowed to be open.”

In fact, it has not yet been four years since the Capitol assault, and the majority of the defendants were not arrested until many months later. And Trump’s “filthy, disgusting” description appears to refer to the District of Columbia jail, which at any given time has only held a couple of dozen defendants who are either awaiting trial or are about to be transferred to a federal prison after their conviction.

Trump in that interview also repeated favorite right-wing conspiracy theories about Jan. 6 ― that “Antifa” was behind the violence and that a man named Ray Epps actually instigated the attack.

What’s more, Trump said his pardons would also extend to those who actually pleaded guilty to assaulting officers because, in his view, the justice system is “corrupt,” and the accused were coerced into taking pleas. “Because they had no choice,” he said.

Further, the “radical” and “crazy” qualifiers for those who might not get pardons conflicts with dozens of statements at his rallies over the past three years in which he has promised to pardon all the Jan. 6 defendants.

During an October campaign event, Trump called Jan. 6 a “day of love,” and even referred to himself and his followers who assaulted the Capitol as “we” and the police as “the others.”

Many of Trump’s most committed followers, and at times Trump himself, have claimed over the past three years that most of those who have received prison terms that day had merely trespassed in the Capitol Complex or committed some other nonviolent offense. Indeed, a popular argument among Trump’s base about the Jan. 6 prosecutions is to post a photo of an elderly woman holding a small U.S. flag — even though the photo was taken at a peaceful demonstration that day in the Kansas statehouse in Topeka, not the U.S. Capitol.

HuffPost’s analysis of sentencing data, moreover, shows that the assertion that those in prison are mainly nonviolent trespassers is unfounded, and that terms of incarceration have generally tracked the person’s level of violence, just as they do in ordinary criminal cases.

The latest numbers released by the Department of Justice show that it has opened prosecutions against a total of 1,572 defendants over the past three years and 11 months. Of those, nearly 1,000 have pleaded guilty to at least one charge, with 321 pleading guilty to felonies.

To further break down how defendants were being prosecuted, HuffPost analyzed a dataset created by The Prosecution Project, which has tracked political violence in the United States since 1990. HuffPost sorted the 853 cases that had been tracked through sentencing by nature of offense and found the following:

• Of the 534 completed nonviolent cases — mostly trespassing or disorderly conduct — 273 defendants received zero jail time; 138 received two months or less; 49 received two to six months; 26 received seven to 12 months; and 48 received more than a year. The average sentence was 4.3 months, and the median sentence was zero.
• Of the 319 completed violent cases — assault, weapons, violent entry, threats — 27 received zero jail time; 18 received two months or less; 22 received two to six months; 16 received seven to 12 months; and 236 received more than one year. The average sentence was 38 months, and the median sentence was 30 months.
• Among the 184 completed cases of assaulting or resisting a police officer, five received zero jail time, one received two months or less; five received two to six months; 10 received seven to 12 months; and 163 received more than one year. The average sentence was 44 months, and the median 39 months.
• Among those sentenced to five or more years, the preponderance of assaults on police officers is even more striking. Of 69 such sentences, 45 are cases of assaulting an officer.
• The only category of crime punished more harshly than assault on an officer was seditious conspiracy — that is, an attack against the United States government by force — to keep Trump in power. Of the 13 cases that have completed sentencing, the average prison term was 117 months, and the median 102 months.

Many of the nonviolent offenders who received substantial prison sentences did so for encouraging others to assault police, or stealing or destroying property inside the Capitol. William Rogan Reid, for example, received 37 months for being among the first in the mob to break through police lines and enter the Capitol, for vandalizing the bathroom in the Speaker’s Lobby, and subsequently showing no remorse during the trial and sentencing.

Dunn, who testified in one of the seditious conspiracy trials, said that other nonviolent offenders on Jan. 6 wound up in prison not necessarily because of their specific actions that day, but because they were already on probation for other crimes.

“Show me a trespasser who’s been sitting in jail for months,” he said. “It doesn’t happen.”

Trump’s position on the thousands of his followers who did as he asked and fought “like hell” on his behalf has changed over the years based on the political need of the moment and the immediate audience.

On Jan. 6 itself, after it became clear that police were retaking control of the Capitol and that his coup attempt had failed, he finally released a video asking his followers to leave the building. Even in that message, though, he suggested that they had done nothing wrong. “We had an election that was stolen from us. It was a landslide election, and everyone knows it, especially the other side, but you have to go home now,” he said. “We love you. You’re very special.”

The following day, after Congress had certified Democrat Joe Biden as the president-elect ― and even top Republican members had excoriated Trump for inciting the attack ― Trump changed his tune and scolded his followers for their actions. “The demonstrators who infiltrated the Capitol have defiled the seat of American democracy. To those who engaged in the acts of violence and destruction, you do not represent our country,” he said, reading from prepared remarks. “And to those who broke the law, you will pay.”

Over the following months, Trump avoided talking about the expanding criminal dragnet that was producing new arrests around the country almost daily of those who had participated in the insurrection. But in November 2021, Fox News aired on its streaming channel a lie-filled “documentary” produced by conspiracy theorist Tucker Carlson — at the time the network’s top-rated host — that began with the false premise that the 2020 election actually had been stolen from Trump and culminated with equally false claims that the attacks had been a “false flag” instigated by federal agents.

Carlson helped turn the Jan. 6 defendants — hundreds of whom violently assaulted police officers — into folk heroes among Trump’s political base. Within weeks, Trump started promising to pardon them in his rally speeches.

The following year, he even collaborated with a group of them locked up in the District of Columbia jail to release a recording of them singing “The Star-Spangled Banner” interspersed with Trump reading the Pledge of Allegiance. An investigation by Just Security, a blog affiliated with New York University School of Law, found that 17 of the 20 in the jail the day of the recording were either awaiting charges or had already been convicted of assaulting police.

Trump, nevertheless, bragged about how well the song was doing on charts. He played it at his rallies, standing at attention and saluting the most violent of the Jan. 6 insurrectionists, and continues to play it at his South Florida country club to this day.

But for Trump’s lies about the 2020 election, Jan. 6 would almost certainly have come and gone without a single police officer assaulted at the Capitol or a single Trump supporter arrested. Despite this, Trump has never taken responsibility for the mayhem he unleashed and the bad circumstances his followers who believed him now find themselves in.

Trump himself was impeached by the House for inciting the attack, although not enough Republican senators joined the majority to reach the two-thirds threshold that would have allowed the chamber to ban him from federal office for life. Trump was later indicted by Justice Department prosecutors for his actions leading up to and on Jan. 6, but dismissed the case after Trump won the presidency in November citing guidelines that prevent the prosecution of a sitting president.

A Georgia prosecution of Trump based on his efforts to overturn his election loss in that state is tied up in pre-trial appeals, but Trump would be able to postpone proceedings there should it resume until he is no longer president.

What Trump will actually do with the Jan. 6 insurrectionists upon taking office is impossible to predict, given his track record of abandoning campaign pledges. One of the most frequently repeated promises of his 2016 campaign was forcing Mexico to pay for a new wall along the entire length of the southern border. After four years, though, Trump managed to build only 52 miles of steel fence on stretches where no barrier previously existed and never made a single attempt to get Mexico to pay for any of it.

Trump continues to say he will begin the process of pardoning Jan. 6 convicted criminals on “Day 1,” even as some on his staff push the notion that there will be a more measured approach that studies the circumstances of each case individually.

There is one group, though, that has been taking Trump at his word: the violent felons, most of whom have assaulted police officers, who tried to advance Trump’s coup attempt four years ago.

After his election victory in November, defendant after defendant scheduled for sentencing has tried to persuade the judge in the case to forgo prison time, arguing that Trump would soon be granting a pardon anyway.

“History has shown that President Donald Trump is not shy when it comes to exercising his pardon powers and there is clearly no reason to believe he won’t do as he says,” argued Kira Anne West and Nicole Cubbage, the defense lawyers for Terry Allen, in a request they filed just three days after Trump’s win.

Allen was convicted of assaulting police officers and other charges for, among other actions, using a flagpole as a spear against police on Jan. 6.

U.S. District Judge Amit Mehta on Nov. 14 sentenced Allen to 24 months in prison anyway, despite the possibility Trump might let Allen out soon.

Other Jan. 6 inmates have been gloating about their impending release. In August, David Dempsey, just hours after receiving 240 months for attacking police on Jan. 6 with a flagpole, crutches, pepper spray and pieces of furniture, called into the vigil outside the D.C. jail where family members and supporters of those prosecuted have been gathering nightly for the past 2 1/2 years.

“Don’t celebrate too hard, man, because that sentence is only going to last like six months,” Dempsey told vigil attendees via speakerphone, referring to Trump opponents he assumed were applauding his two-decade sentence. “And then we’re going to have four years of dragging our nuts across your forehead.”

Federal judges hearing the Jan. 6 prosecutions have denounced the potential pardons — while also pointing out that they had no ability to block them.

“The rewriting of the history of Jan. 6, 2021, is incredibly disturbing,” U.S. District Judge Beryl Howell said last week, pointing out all the evidence that proves the insurrectionists did exactly what they are being prosecuted for.

To Michael Fanone, a former Washington, D.C., police officer who was shocked with his own Taser on Jan. 6 so much that he suffered a heart attack, Trump’s election and vow to pardon those who attacked Fanone and his colleagues carries a simpler, scarier message:

“The rule of law is dead in this country,” he said.

HuffPost’s Arthur Delaney contributed to this report.

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