WASHINGTON—The recent Meet the Press interview with President-elect Donald Trump has raised questions among supporters and detractors regarding his familiarity with the specifics of the extensive probe into the Capitol attack, which has resulted in hundreds of convictions in the almost four years since January 6.
Trump has stated that he will probably start pardoning Jan. 6 defendants as soon as he takes office, which is just a few weeks away. Trump told Time magazine, “I’ll be watching J6 early on, maybe the first nine minutes.” We will examine each case separately, and we will do so in a short amount of time. It will begin the first hour I arrive at work. And the great majority of them ought not to be incarcerated.
An unprecedented degree of agreement is revealed by interviews with law enforcement authorities, Trump friends, sympathizers of the Jan. 6 defendants, and internet detectives who have assisted the FBI investigation: They could see from Trump’s recent remarks that he hasn’t kept up with the Jan. 6 docket. In the extensive Capitol breach investigation, more than 1,500 people have been prosecuted, 1,100 have been found guilty, and more than 600 have received prison sentences. Throughout 2024, defendants were detained, found guilty, and given sentences; however, the trials’ media attention dwindled.
Trump told Kristen Welker of NBC News that he would be moving swiftly to pardon the defendants from January 6 and that there might be an exception if they were insane or extremist. Additionally, he seemed to think incorrectly that the majority of the Jan. 6 defendants were being held at the Washington jail, although only a small number of defendants are still being held for trial, and those convicted are currently being imprisoned in federal prisons across the nation. According to one law enforcement officer, the interview made it very evident that Trump was not privy to the specifics of the instances from January 6.
The president-elect’s blind spots on the extensive investigation were revealed in the Meet the Press interview, according to a Trump supporter who is aware of the conversations within the Trump team.
According to the Trump ally, the public needs to hear a more precise and modern defense of pardons for the offenders from January 6. The imprisonment of a few hundred J6ers who have been sentenced to prison is not limited to the D.C. jail.
Even for those who are familiar with the daily operations of J6 prosecution, it can be challenging to stay up to date. However, the Trump ally stated that it is crucial that the president have a clear and convincing case for these pardons.
According to another individual with firsthand knowledge of the Trump transition team’s planning, rather than pardoning everyone involved, they believe that a select few defendants who would be highly deserving of a pardon were being chosen, and that the remaining defendants would then be vetted over the course of several weeks and months. Another person with knowledge of the conversation stated that while they anticipate Trump will pardon widely, there are no signs that he has yet to get into specifics. There was no response from the Trump transition team.
According to one Trump associate, Ed Martin, a conservative activist whom Trump just appointed as chief of staff at the Office of Management and Budget, has been heavily involved in conversations on pardons on January 6. Martin served on the board of the Patriot Freedom Project, a group that has held fundraisers at Trump’s properties and supports the families of the Jan. 6 defendants. Martin was at the Capitol on January 6 as well, but there is no proof that he entered a prohibited area. In the wake of the attack, he spread conspiracy theories, one of which was about a man he called Mr. Coffee. A request for comment from Martin, who supported Trump at a fundraiser for the Jan. 6 defendants last year, was not answered.
Trump will need to go far on pardons to fulfill his campaign and post-election promises, according to Bill Shipley, an attorney who has represented many clients since January 6. Shipley expressed optimism about the pardon process despite the fact that he had not yet seen any signs of a formal procedure being established.
“I believe that the range of pardons or commutations that will occur after January 20 will be fairly extensive,” Shipley stated. As of yet, there is no indication that a decision has been made on the method by which those pardons will be handled.
The defendants in the Jan. 6 case include rioters who were caught on camera brandishing or using firearms, stun guns, flagpoles, fire extinguishers, bike racks, batons, ametal whips, office furniture, pepper spray, bear spray, a tomahawk ax, a hatchet, a hockey stick, knuckle gloves, a baseball bat, a large Trump billboard, Trump flags, a pitchfork, pieces of lumber, crutches, and even an explosive device during the vicious attack that injured over 140 police officers.
In an interview with NBC News, Steve Baker, a Jan. 6 defendant who currently writes for Glenn Beck’s The Blaze and whose sentencing is set shortly after Trump takes office, said he could see that Trump was occupied with establishing his government.
I’m not being judgmental. In light of everything else he has on his plate at the moment, Baker stated that the one thing he is lacking is knowledge of the specifics of these instances from January 6. Not everyone is now seated in the D.C. gulag. It was obvious that he had little knowledge of the specific cases. Like most people, he has a few tidbits of story knowledge.
Where is he? What happened to him?
His reference to out-of-date conspiracy theories regarding the Jan. 6 attack, citing the name of Ray Epps, a Trump supporter who was wrongfully accused of being a federal informant after one of Trump’s former White House speechwriters disseminated that conspiracy theory online, was another statement that raised concerns even among some of his most ardent supporters.
Early in the tumultuous investigation, Epps was the sixteenth individual whose picture was posted to the FBI’s Capitol violence website. He was promptly identified and taken down from the website. The idea that Epps was unintentionally included to the list and subsequently taken off of it gave rise to conspiracy ideas that he was a federal informant. (The mob members accused their fellow Trump supporters of being either undercover federal agents or members of the left-wing organization antifa, which has participated in violent rallies.) Many of the conspiracy theories originated in the crowd on January 6th itself.
Ray Epps: What happened to him? In the interview, Trump remarked, “I don’t know anything about Ray Epps, but his way of talking was kind of strange.” He’s where? How did he end up?
Epps is under federal probation, to put it simply. Epps entered a guilty plea to one count of disorderly or disruptive conduct on restricted grounds after being charged by the Justice Department in 2023. Federal prosecutors claimed that Epps’ attempts to organize and motivate a throng to storm the Capitol warranted a six-month jail sentence. A federal judge granted Epps probation, stating that considering the collateral effects of the conspiracy theory on Epps’ life, incarceration was not justified because Epps had been maligned in a case specific to January 6 defendants and was the only one who suffered for something they did not commit.
During his January sentencing hearing, Epps stated that he now understood that the 2020 election was not rigged and that those who backed President Trump and listened to his and others’ claims about it were responsible for the violence. Epps claimed that being singled out by his fellow conspiracy theorists was a wake-up call.
“It was a life-changing reality check when Fox News and the Trump cult turned on me and my wife for a convenient shift of blame,” Epps said at his sentencing hearing. In order to find the truth, my wife and I had to search elsewhere.
Although the Ray Epps controversy is entertaining to the public, a Trump supporter told NBC News that it did not provide a convincing justification for Trump’s decision to pardon the offenders on January 6. According to the source, overall, that is not a strong justification for this crucial political and public argument that must be made.
Throughout the interview, Trump reiterated a number of conspiracy theories.
Trump said that while those individuals appear to be in good health, there may be some anti-Fa members among the throng on January 6. After being arrested, many Jan. 6 participants who were mistakenly identified as anti-fascist demonstrators turned out to be Trump supporters; however, one anti-establishment activist is presently serving a six-year prison sentence after prosecutors claimed he came to incite chaos.
Trump also claimed that the public was not being given access to video footage. Many cameras are in your possession. They are opposed to the tapes being made public. Trump stated that they do not wish to make the tapes public. Indeed, a Republican-led group has posted thousands of hours of Jan. 6 CCTV footage on the conservative video-sharing website Rumble, and the Justice Department has routinely made evidentiary films from Jan. 6 cases available upon request from a media consortium.
Ride this train
Ninety people have been identified and turned in to the FBI but have not yet been arrested, according to online detectives who have helped the FBI make hundreds of arrests, as reported by NBC News. Among them are 59 people whom the FBI has labeled as AFO, meaning they are wanted for assaulting federal law enforcement, and nine listed as AOM, or wanted for assaulting the media. A law enforcement source told NBC News last month that investigators would focus on themost egregiousJan. 6 cases until Trump took office, and seven AFOs have been arrested since then, along with 10 defendants whose photos were not featured on the FBI website.
One online sleuth said Trump s comments were a rehash of the oldest internet conspiracies, but joked that they did agree with Trump that House Republicans should publish more Jan. 6 footage, since some of the most critical video has never been uploaded.
There didn’t seem to be any internal coherence in Trump’s assertions, according to another investigator.
He is furious that those who did not enter the Capitol were taken into custody. However, he also wants to know Epps’s fate. Additionally, he has pledged to pardon all those who were arrested. For example, Epps did not enter the Capitol after being charged and condemned. However, they asked, “Whatever happened to Epps?” It s just likearrrgh.
Inside the Justice Department, there s a sense of frustration about the pending pardons, but pride about the work that the Capitol Siege Section has done. Even if Trump pardons hundreds of Jan. 6 defendants, there s a record of the reality of the attack that cannot be erased.
You can t unring the bell of the conviction, one federal prosecutor involved in Jan. 6 cases told NBC News. No one can take that away.
The source said that prosecutors were determined to do their work until the end, whether that s when a Trump-appointed Justice Department official orders the investigation shut down, or when the five-year statute of limitations expires in 2026.
The mood has shifted, but we re far from demoralized, they said. We re going to ride this train til the end of the line, whether that s Jan. 20, 2025, or Jan. 6, 2026.
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