Then-Attorney General Merrick Garland attempted to describe the vast breadth of the law enforcement effort to apprehend the rioters on the first anniversary of the Jan. 6 riot, referring to it as one of the biggest, most intricate, and most resource-intensive investigations in our history.
Almost all federal Jan. 6 defendants were pardoned by President Donald Trump on Monday, with the exception of a few who still had their jail sentences commuted.
In an exclusive interview with NBC News, Jason Manning, a line prosecutor who worked on Jan. 6 cases in Washington for years, stated, “I don’t think that’s OK.” The pardons are terrible, in my opinion.
judicial experts and Justice Department officials are describing the action as an unprecedented and risky use of the pardon power that inflicted a devastating damage to the American judicial system as well as federal law enforcement. They claim it belittles years of work by federal judges, prosecutors, and FBI agents—some of whom Trump appointed—after an effort that resulted in more than 200 convictions at trial, more than 1,000 guilty pleas, and charges against 1,583 defendants. Given that 608 of those detained were accused of assaulting, resisting, or obstructing law enforcement personnel or officers, some fear it heralds the start of a season of political violence, while others worry about the precedent set for future presidents.
The pardons, according to Manning, are disrespectful to the numerous police officers who suffered severe injuries on that day.
“You have to consider what it means for those officers and their families to be told that assaults are unimportant and that it’s acceptable to attack police officers in that manner,” he said.
Manning claimed that he considered defending democracy when he joined the effort to pursue the Jan. 6 perpetrators. However, he added, “once I got a sense of what hell they lived through and how much they put up with to try to stand ground for this country, the cases really became about so much about vindicating them as victims,” after spending time with the police officers who responded to the incident.
“The sweeping move ends a grave national injustice that has been perpetrated upon the American people over the last four years and begins a process of national reconciliation,” Trump said in his order granting the pardons.
Trump pardoned almost 1,500 convicts in total on January 6, including those found guilty of violent assaults on police. Commutations of long jail sentences were granted to only 14 riot organizers who were not pardoned. Additionally, hundreds of cases that were still pending prosecution were dismissed by Trump’s decision.
President George W. Bush’s attorney general, Alberto Gonzales, told NBC News that he would have persuaded Trump to refrain from pardoning violent felons.
He remarked, “Obviously, I find it a little disappointing that anyone involved in a violent crime would receive a full pardon.” There should be severe jail time involved in assaulting a police officer because it is a very serious offense. Given that the prosecutions were successful, I’m not sure how you can claim it was a witch hunt.
The Belmont University School of Law’s dean, Gonzales, likewise bemoaned the resource waste.
Prosecution of these cases cost the government a great deal of time and money. It’s all for nothing. “You mean government waste?” he asked.
A presidential action that struck like a lightning bolt was still being processed by Justice Department personnel. Although almost everyone anticipated some pardons on January 6, Trump’s own vice president and attorney general candidate stated in recent days that those guilty of assaulting law enforcement officials should not receive preferential treatment. The same has been said by other Republican members of Congress who were in danger during the incident.
The sweeping pardons were described as a gross injustice by a senior career officer at the Justice Department, while another claimed they strongly encourage political violence and indicate that nothing that occurred on January 6 was illegal. It is what I see to be Trump’s campaign of personal retaliation.
The nomination of Ed Martin, a well-known supporter of the Jan. 6 defendants, as the acting U.S. attorney in Washington, D.C., raised even more concerns, according to the first official.
That might actually push people away, the first official warned. These pardons are awful. However, it would be detrimental but not essentially at odds with the future operations of the U.S. attorney’s office if it were restricted to pardons without any long-standing claim of control. Over the years, we’ve witnessed some highly contentious pardons. This is excessive in terms of both the pardons and the future.
Mike Davis, a lawyer who provides Trump with informal legal advice on matters pertaining to law enforcement, defended the pardoning of violent offenders. He told NBC News that the Biden administration treated the defendants on January 6 differently than other people who committed the same crimes and vilified them by calling them insurrectionists.
According to Davis, even individuals who attacked police officers have endured enough suffering over the past four years, so he did not oppose criminal charges against them. More has already been paid by them than by any [Black Lives Matter] demonstrators who have attacked law enforcement.
He claimed that even aggressive rioters who had not yet been charged had suffered a great deal.
There was a more limited defense offered by certain legal experts and attorneys who have defended Jan. 6 defendants to support the pardons of at least the nonviolent offenders: that the Justice Department was unjustly and unusually harsh on them.
According to a lawyer who wished to remain anonymous because he frequently works with the Justice Department, the resources used by the FBI and DOJ to prosecute the typical J6er were absurd. especially considering that the DOJ has simply arrested ringleaders or carried out mass dismissals for several instances of insane violence or destruction in other circumstances.
There were accounts of mob members who merely entered the Capitol building without authorization, entered guilty pleas to felonies, and served time in jail—in many cases, a life-altering event.
During the summer 2020 riots in response to the police killing of George Floyd in Minneapolis, Paul H. Robinson, the Colin S. Diver professor of law at the University of Pennsylvania Carey Law School, contended in an interview that authorities did not invest the same resources and intensity in those who participated in violence. That is an argument that many Republican lawmakers have also made.
It’s difficult to look at the issue without acknowledging that politics plays a significant role, Robinson said. I believe that the Justice Department was a little too eager to turn this into something it wasn’t.
Officials from the Justice Department disagree, claiming that the Capitol incident was distinct from previous riots due to its attempt to obstruct the legitimate transition of power that took place in full view and supported by an unprecedented volume of video evidence.
However, prosecutors and even many critics agree that Trump went too far in pardoning violent offenders.
The attorney who frequently works with the Justice Department added, “Those pardons are ugly and bad, the guys with real violence, real planning, weapons, etc.” They went blanket because, I suppose, they simply didn’t want the hassle of separating the sheep from the goats.
In a Monday morning opinion piece in The Hill, Robinson advised Trump to exercise caution when it comes to pardons on January 6. “Obviously, he didn’t listen to me,” he told NBC News. It is detrimental to both the nation and the president.
Former federal prosecutor and George Washington University Law School professor Randall Eliason said he thought the pardons were a devastating blow to the legal system and that they were one of Trump’s most risky power abuses to date. It gives the impression that Trump will support you and ensure you are not held responsible if you commit crimes on his behalf.
Bruce Ackerman, the Sterling professor of law and political science at Yale Law School, described the situation as one in which a president pardons his allies for their involvement in a bloody coup d’etat rather than using the pardon power with consideration and discernment.
Ackerman and other legal experts claimed that former President Joe Biden’s last-minute preemptive pardons of family members constituted another misuse of the pardon authority.
The whataboutism doesn’t work here, however, according to Chuck Rosenberg, a former US attorney and NBC News contributor who concurred that some of Biden’s pardons were quite problematic. He went on to say that the best candidates for pardons are those who have earned grace, paid their obligation to society, expressed regret and repentance, and accepted responsibility. Trump doesn’t appear to have taken any of that into consideration.
Trump and allies have long waged a campaign of disinformation about Jan. 6, asserting that antifa or FBI operatives ginned up the riot or that the descriptions of violence were overblown. Trump called the defendants from January 6 hostages on multiple occasions.
In addition to the video evidence documenting the violence, independent investigations debunked the conspiracy theories, including one by the Justice Department inspector general that found no evidence that anyone linked to the FBI did anything to incite the riot.
U.S. District Judge Royce Lamberth, an appointee of President Ronald Reagan, pointedly took on the fabrications in a sentencing opinion a year ago, writing: In my thirty-seven years on the bench, I cannot recall a time when such meritless justifications of criminal activity have gone mainstream.
The Court fears, Lamberth continues, that such destructive, misguided rhetoric could presage further danger to our country.
Manning, the former prosecutor of Jan. 6 cases, said that while the pardons are painful, they do not change the fact that these crimes were committed or that the Justice Department won more than 1,000 convictions.
So speaking just for myself, no regrets about the effort we made to build these cases, and even after these pardons, the record stands, he said.