Trump’s pardons will embolden the Proud Boys, another far-right group, experts say By Reuters
(Editor’s note: This story contains offensive language)
(Reuters) – A day after U.S. President Donald Trump granted a sweeping pardon for all of the nearly 1,600 people accused of attacking the U.S. Capitol in 2021, the U.S. far-right celebrated. Some called for the death of the judges overseeing the trials. Others were amused and relieved. Some even cried for joy.
Several experts who study extremism said the remarkable turnaround for rioters who committed both violent and non-violent crimes on Jan. 6, including attacks on police officers and a riot plot, will embolden the Proud Boys and other extremist groups such as white supremacists who have openly called for political violence.
In a few strokes of his pen, Trump overturned the largest US Department of Justice investigation and prosecution in history, as he tried to rewrite what happened during the violent riots on January 6, 2021. When he took office for a second term on Monday, Trump continued to falsely claim that the 2020 elections are rigged and that he is the real winner. He described the unrest as a peaceful “day of love” rather than a riot aimed at overturning the results of the 2020 US presidential election.
“We’re not going to put up with that shit anymore,” Trump said at a post-inauguration rally on Monday, describing the Jan. 6 perpetrators as “hostages.”
For the defendants convicted on January 6 and for Trump loyalists, the pardons were justification for unjust persecutions by the president’s political enemies. Gavin McInnes, the British founder of the Proud Boys, said in an interview that he and his friends celebrated late on Monday by “chugging bourbon and laughing our heads off.”
Before the 2020 election, Trump told the Proud Boys – an all-male violent extremist group – to “step back and stand aside”. Three months later, federal prosecutors say, the group’s leaders planned the Jan. 6 attack.
“This is a win for us,” said McInnes, now a right-wing podcaster. If Trump hadn’t pardoned all the Proud Boys, the president would be “dead to me, and the Proud Boys and MAGA and everything,” he said. “But luckily that didn’t happen.”
In a video posted online shortly after the pardon, convicted rioter Christopher Kuehne, a Marine Corps veteran from Kansas who traveled to Washington with the Proud Boys in January 2021, sobbed, “I’m finally free. I have no words to thank President Trump for what what he did for us.” In February, he was sentenced to 75 days in jail and 24 months of supervised release for obstructing law enforcement.
Another proud boy told Reuters the pardons would help recruit more members. “A lot of us people stayed away after the arrest,” he said, speaking on condition of anonymity. “Now they’ll feel like they’re bulletproof.”
The riots began after Trump rallied thousands of supporters to march on the Capitol on Jan. 6, 2021, when Congress confirmed Democrat Joe Biden’s victory. Inspired by Trump’s baseless claims of a rigged election, they occupied the Capitol, starting pitched battles with the police. Some beat the officers with improvised weapons that included metal pipes, wooden poles and baseball bats. Prosecutors said the rioters carried firearms, tasers, swords, axes and knives.
On the day of the attack, four people died, including a protester who was shot by the police. One Capitol Police officer fighting the rioters died the next day. Another 140 police officers were injured. Four police officers who responded to the riot later committed suicide.
Norm Pattis, a defense attorney representing the three Proud Boys and a leader of the Oath Keepers militia, rejected the idea that a blanket pardon would in any way lead to an increase in political violence.
“Our politics have always been violent,” Pattis said, pointing to events ranging from the American Civil War to the protests of the 1960s. “And so a few hours of rebellion at the Capitol will guarantee years, decades behind bars? For some people it’s disproportionate, and in my opinion it’s just repulsive.”
“YOU NEED RESPONSIBILITY”
Two police officers who were beaten while trying to hold back the crowd said the pardons were a chilling sign that loyalty to Trump was now more important than the rule of law.
“It’s outrageous,” former DC Metropolitan police officer Michael Fanone told Reuters. Fanone suffered a heart attack and brain injury after being beaten, sprayed with chemical irritants and shocked with a stun gun during the January 6 violence. Fanone, 44, who spent 20 years as a police officer, said the pardons are likely to incite other supporters to violence, “because they believe that Donald Trump is going to give them a pardon. And why shouldn’t they believe in that?”
Aquilino Gonell, a former U.S. Capitol Police sergeant who was injured defending the Capitol, said Trump’s pardons have nothing to do with righting an injustice. Trump and his Republican allies have “lost their right to the moral high ground when they defend our system of government, the constitution and support the police,” he said.
Among those pardoned were more than 300 who pleaded guilty to assault or obstructing law enforcement, including 69 who pleaded guilty to assaulting police with a dangerous or deadly weapon. Trump’s order reduced the sentences of 14 people convicted of serious crimes, including Stewart Rhodes, the former leader of the Oath Keepers. Trump has also issued pardons for others, including former Proud Boys leader Enrique Tarrio, who was sentenced to 22 years for sedition.
Nearly 300 of the rioters were affiliated with 46 far-right groups or movements, according to a study by the National Consortium for the Study of Terrorism and Responses to Terrorism, a network of scholars based at the University of Maryland that tracks and analyzes terrorist incidents.
Heather Shaner, a Washington lawyer who has represented more than 40 defendants, called the pardons an attempt to wash history. “You need accountability,” she said in an interview. “Only by admitting the truth and taking responsibility can you move forward.”
Some experts on political extremism said the pardons would encourage pro-Trump vigilantes to commit violence in the belief that they would receive legal immunity if they acted in Trump’s interests. “They’re going to feel like they can do whatever they want,” Julie Farnam, who was the assistant director of intelligence for the U.S. Capitol Police during the Jan. 6 riots, said of far-right groups. “They’re going to feel like they can because there’s no leadership in the United States trying to stop it,” said Farnam, who now runs a private investigative agency.
Couy Griffin, who was stripped of his post as a New Mexico county commissioner after being convicted of trespassing on Capitol property, said he has instructed his lawyer to reject Trump’s pardon while he appeals the conviction in federal court. In the interview, Griffin said he believes Trump’s enemies have distorted the truth about the unrest at the Capitol.
“Was there violence against police officers? Yes, there was also a lot of police violence against the crowd,” he said, echoing a common complaint of Trump supporters.
DEATH THREATS TO LAWYERS, POLITICIANS
Many Trump supporters praised the pardons on right-wing Internet forums. Some threatened those who supported the accusations.
On the pro-Trump website Patriots.Win, at least two dozen people expressed hope for executions of Democrats, judges or law enforcement related to the Jan. 6 cases. They called for lawyers or policemen to be hanged, beaten to death, ground in wood chippers or thrown from helicopters.
“Gather the entire federal judiciary in the stadium. Then let them listen and watch as judges are beaten to death,” wrote one. “Cut off their heads and put them on the dice outside,” Department of Justice.
Others called for the killing of Trump’s political critics after former House Speaker Nancy Pelosi, an influential Democrat, called the pardons an “outrageous insult.” “If someone were to successfully hit Pelosi, I’d consider them a hero,” one Patriots.Win commenter wrote. Another wanted Liz Cheney, the Republican who defied Trump by leading a congressional investigation into the violence, to “hang.”
One of the most notorious rioters, Jake Angeli-Chansley, who became known as the “QAnon Shaman” for wearing a horned hat in the Capitol, took to social media platform X to celebrate after the pardon. Sentenced to 41 months in prison in 2021, he was released from federal custody in 2023.
“I’LL BUY MOTHAFU*KIN GUNS NOW!!! I LOVE THIS COUNTRY!!! GOD BLESS AMERICA!!!”
