Washington Members of Congress will be under strict security Monday as they certify Trump’s 2024 election victory, guaranteeing the first president to be charged with a federal felony will return to the White House in two weeks. This comes four years after supporters of Donald Trump stormed the U.S. Capitol in support of his efforts to overturn his 2020 election loss.
Trump will take the oath of office as the 47th president of the United States on January 20 by passing via the lower west tunnel, which saw some of the worst carnage during the attack on January 6, 2021. Trump has promised to pardon an unspecified number of Jan. 6 defendants when he takes office. Trump was charged with four felonies in connection with Jan. 6 and his attempts to overturn his 2020 election defeat. (After Trump was elected, special counsel Jack Smith dropped the charges against him. His team wrote that although it supported the case and the evidence against him was compelling, the dismissal was required because of the Justice Department’s long-standing stance that the Constitution prohibits prosecuting a sitting president.)
However, even as the last days of President Joe Biden’s tenure draw near, and even as the defendants in the Jan. 6 probe concur that it is obvious Trump is not familiar with the specifics of the cases, details of Trump’s plans remain unclear.
It is hard to keep up with what is going on, even for those who are familiar with the daily J6 prosecution, a Trump friend previously told NBC News, adding that Trump needed to come up with a “very succinct and compelling argument for these pardons.”
According to data released Monday by the U.S. Attorney’s Office for the District of Columbia, a comprehensive investigation has resulted in more than 660 prison terms, with over 1,580 people charged and over 1,270 convicted. The length of prison terms has varied, ranging from a few days to 22 years in federal prison, which was the punishment given to former Proud Boys chairman Enrique Tarrio following his conviction for seditious conspiracy. The majority of the hundreds of more Jan. 6 offenders who were found guilty of minor infractions like unauthorized parading were given probationary sentences.
The federal government increased security at the Capitol by designating the Electoral College certification as a National Special Security Event back in September, before Trump won the election. Even though Trump’s victory all but eliminated the possibility of a mob storming the Capitol on Monday, the government proceeded with the original plan and implemented stringent security measures that will continue to be in place as law enforcement agencies prepare for Trump’s inauguration on January 20 and events honoring the late President Jimmy Carter as he lies in state in the Capitol Rotunda.
Workers at the Capitol were erecting more layers of high fencing around the Capitol grounds, particularly on the west front, which Trump supporters occupied during the Capitol attack four years ago, on Saturday morning, around 36 hours before a snowfall was predicted to hit Washington.
During a ceremony with freshly elected Democratic lawmakers on Sunday, Biden urged them to talk honestly about the Capitol attack, which left over 140 police officers injured and some law enforcement officers dead.
It is now your responsibility to speak the truth, to keep in mind what transpired, and to prevent January 6th from being rewritten,” Biden stated. “It s one of the toughest days in American history.”
From referring to the Capitol breach as a “heinous attack” in 2021 to calling it a “day of love” last year, Trump, like many of his fellow Republicans, has made significant changes in his terminology since the Jan. 6 attack. Numerous conspiracy theories spread by Trump supporters on Capitol Hill have contributed to the attempt to rewrite the events of January 6. As a result, a federal judge appointed by President Ronald Reagan expressed shock that such “meritless justifications of criminal activity” had become commonplace and warned about the “preposterous” rhetoric used by many prominent Republican politicians.
At a separate sentencing hearing last month, U.S. District Judge Royce Lamberth stated, “The bedrock assumption of our judicial system is that truth and justice, law and order, are values of paramount importance and are worth protecting even at great expense.” Regardless of the political climate, this case and others like it demonstrate that our legal system is always effective. It’s worth conveying that message.
There were no indications of the plaque that was supposed to have been placed on the west side of the Capitol last week to commemorate the law enforcement personnel who defended the building and MPs during the assault on January 6.
Trump has used out-of-date talking points when discussing Jan. 6 cases and has stated that members of the House Jan. 6 committee “should go to jail.” Trump appointed former Rep. Matt Gaetz, R-Fla., a Jan. 6 conspiracy theorist, as his attorney general until Gaetz resigned due to allegations of sexual misconduct involving an underage girl. (Gaetz has refuted the claims.) According to Trump, the Jan. 6 offenders were subject to “a very nasty system” and he would be “acting very quickly” on the pardons.
Although Trump stated that there “may be some exceptions” to his pardons from January 6 “if somebody was radical, crazy,” he did not rule out pardoning those who had confessed to assaulting police officers. Pardons will be granted “case by case,” according to the Trump transition team, but Trump has stated that the “vast majority” of the defendants from January 6 shouldn’t be behind bars.Only eight pretrial defendants are still in the Washington jail, according to the U.S. attorney’s office. The other defendants who were incarcerated on January 6 are serving their sentences following their convictions, which occurred either after they entered a guilty plea and confessed to their crimes in court or when juries or judges found evidence beyond a reasonable doubt that they had committed the crimes they were charged with.
It is unclear how ongoing proceedings against those accused of attacking law enforcement officials will be handled, even if it appears doubtful that more misdemeanor cases against low-level Jan. 6 defendants will be brought under a Trump administration. More than 200 persons suspected of assaulting law enforcement or media personnel have been identified but not yet arrested, according to online sedition hunters who have already assisted the FBI in hundreds of Jan. 6 cases. They include over 60 individuals whose photos appear on the FBI’s website where they are listed as sought for assault.
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