The Trump Pardons of Jan 6 Prisoners

I strongly prefer women of color. Every color.

1/22/2025 6:00:55 PM

Given all the discussion about the first days of Trump’s second term, I’m surprised there’s been almost no mention here of the pardons he granted for the “January 6 hostages.”

I’m sure some of these prisoners deserve a break, but I’m upset that Trump did across-the-board pardons for all 1,500+ of them – including those who were convicted of attacking members of law enforcement. I’m not surprised he did it, I just think it was wrong not to consider granting pardons on a case-by-case basis.

Given that we have some TUSCLers who have expressed full support for Trump, I’d be curious to hear from any here who support the pardoning of the Jan 6 prisoners who committed violent crimes.

I’m not here to start a fight and won’t call out any thoughtful poster who thinks differently than I do about this. I’m just interested in knowing the reasons anyone thinks pardoning those convicted of violent crimes was a righteous move on the part of Donald Trump.

I only ask one thing: If you post a well-reasoned defense of Trump on this topic, please do so without referencing the pardons of ANY OTHER PRESIDENT, whether it’s Biden, Obama, Bush, Clinton, etc. They all made pardons that were reprehensible to many people (including me), and I’m not interested in comments based on what-about-ism.

If you think Trump did the right thing, please post your reasons why.

Thanks in advance for keeping things civil (he said with fingers crossed).

31 comments

Jump to latest

Puddy Tat

•

a day ago

I'm pretty Republican (if I haven't made that clear elsewhere), I believe that most of the Jan 6 prisoners were imprisoned to flex the new regime's muscle, I think the term "insurrection" is nonsense...but if you attacked law enforcement, you attacked law enforcement.

I do not support that.

gammanu95

•

a day ago

What I have read is that there were so many distortions made by the J6 Committee, so much false testimony given by alleged witnesses, and so much deleted and manipulated media that Trump became concerned that there could be oversights or other innocent citizens left to be punished for crimes they did not actually commit. His determination was that it would be better for a few guilty to go free rather than risk dozens of hundreds to be punished for crimes they were innocent of. You compare this to the Biden pardons, all 8,000 of them, and it becomes an insignificant number. Even worse, many of these people were victims of the weaponized justice system and charge-stacking, and were unable to mount a reasonable defense. Look at the pre-emptive pardons that Biden issued to the very people who are guilty of the worst abuses on J6- the committee itself and the liars they brought to testify. How would it be right that they go free while the people THEY attacked be left to suffer? Last, but not least, it was campaign promise. Another one that Trump kept to. It is what a majority of Americans voted for.

Remember the truth - not a single cop died on J6 nor as a result of anything that occurred on J6. https://www.npr.org/2021/04/19/988876722…
The only death was unarmed woman killed by Michael Byrd, a bad cop with long record of abuses and professional breaches. https://nypost.com/2021/08/26/us-capitol…
https://www.foxnews.com/us/documents-ash…

gammanu95

•

a day ago

AUTHOR: Benjamin Franklin (1706–90)
QUOTATION: That it is better 100 guilty Persons should escape than that one innocent Person should suffer, is a Maxim that has been long and generally approved.
ATTRIBUTION: BENJAMIN FRANKLIN, letter to Benjamin Vaughan, March 14, 1785.—The Writings of Benjamin Franklin, ed. Albert H. Smyth, vol. 9, p. 293 (1906).

He was echoing Voltaire, “that generous Maxim, that ’tis much more Prudence to acquit two Persons, tho’ actually guilty, than to pass Sentence of Condemnation on one that is virtuous and innocent.—Zadig, chapter 6, p. 53 (1749, reprinted 1974).

Sir William Blackstone, in his Commentaries on the Laws of England, 9th ed., book 4, chapter 27, p. 358 (1783, reprinted 1978), says, “For the law holds, that it is better that ten guilty persons escape, than that one innocent suffer.”

Kermit69

•

a day ago

Trump gave them pardons because they were his supporters. He did not care if they were guilty and was not trying to protect any potentially innocent people. Is anyone surprised.

Mate27

•

a day ago

Really, does it matter what we think? Turn the page.

tin man

•

a day ago

Im just happy we have stopped pretending we back the blue, as a black man fuck them. I dont support donald, but him pardoning them sets the tone for what he thinks about the capital police and law enforcement in general

ilbbaicnl

•

a day ago

Gammy has a point. When someone is as lazy and senile as Trump, it would be unrealistic, perhaps even elder abuse, to expect him to make pardons on a case by case basis.

Biden's pardon of the cash-for-kids judge eliminated any clear edge in morality he had over Trump. But the J6 pardons are a bigger systemic threat. Why shouldn't we now expect that DC is open ground for paramilitary groups to organize, to prevent non-MAGA election winners from taking office? Sure, the "he doesn't really mean it crowd" will be happy to move their goal posts again. Any sensible person should now fear that MAGA governors in Texas and other states will use the pardon power to license such paramilitaries to organize in their states as well.

misterorange

•

a day ago

Plus all of them had already been in jail for 4 years. I don't know what the normal sentence is for assault of a police officer, but some of them were given 14 years. You see career criminals convicted for the 20th time who don't get that. In fact assaulting a cop while being arrested is irrelevant to those thugs because it will just be served concurrent with other stuff, so there's like no punishment at all for the assault. It's a freebie to hit a few cops if you're a gang banger, but a first time offender who got carried away up gets 14 years.

sinclair

•

a day ago

Very few of the people imprisoned would have ever been convicted if the trials were outside of DC. Many of them simply paraded or trespassed, and even so, the police were not stopping people from casually strolling into the building at some entrances. A lot of the men in the DC gulag were military veterans who have served this country. Democrats think they are so horrible because they prayed and sang the National Anthem every night in jail. The "pre-pardoning of the J6 committee" is all the evidence we need to understand the political motivations behind imprisoning over 1,500 politcal opponents. Will Nancy ever be held accountable for telling the national guard to stay away from the Capitol? No, she is too busy getting rich on insider trading. Will we ever be told how many FBI agents were embedded in the crowd and what their roles were? The FBI looked pretty bad after the facts came out in the "Whitmer kidnapping plot". Will anyone ever be held accountable for burning St. John's Episcopal Church during "peaceful protests" outside the White House?

ilbbaicnl

•

a day ago

A small positive is that, for 14 who were most clearly guilty of organizing premeditated political violence, they were given commutations not pardons. https://news.wttw.com/2025/01/20/donald-…

ilbbaicnl

•

a day ago

Pelosi, like Trump and most politicians, should be held accountable for profiteering off of their positions. But not for slanderous lies made up by traitors to democracy.

whodey

•

a day ago

The pardon for January 6th rioters is nothing compared to Biden commuting the sentence of a terrorist convicted of murdering two law enforcement officers (with democratsfavorite weapon an AR-15) and attempting to murder a third law enforcement officer.

https://apnews.com/article/leonard-pelti…

gammanu95

•

a day ago

Well, this another example of the left showing off their moral corruption and intellectual inferiority

skibum609

•

a day ago

Not a fan of Presidential pardons and the last two have been the worst.

CostaTheCrazyGreek

•

21 hours ago

To gammanu95: She should have complied.

ilbbaicnl

•

21 hours ago

The Peltier case is not so cut and dried: https://www.amnestyusa.org/action-toolki…

Muddy

•

20 hours ago

If your assaulting police as some were defintely doing on that we don't do buisness like that in this country, you got a serve a reasonable sentence (not 20 years, good lord) A lot of folks were just THERE and went to jail, are we fucking out of our minds. Release them today.

In a lot our blue cities you got guys doing way worse shit than anybody did on January 6th. When you really dig into to places like Chicago, and see what some of these hardcore gangbangers get a way with, I mean you have murderers with ankle braclets on, they put them right back out there to kill, assault, rob, intimidate right again. These are guys with long rap sheets too. So those the two tier justice system is a thing. Look at Daniel Penny this is a very perverse that's going on.

Muddy

•

20 hours ago

As far biden commutes, I don't think he has any idea what he signs. But there are very sinister Soros backed folks in his administration who quite frankly want to destroy the country. No personal animus against Joe Biden, but you got to look at where the ball lands. And ultimately north of 12 million of who knows what coming in, inevitably some folks in there who want to do great harm to Americans, intentionally let in, there's just nothing Donald Trump has done that is anywhere close to as bad as that. There's just no argument there. He's gonna be spending the next 4 years just trying to unfuck all that.

ilbbaicnl

•

20 hours ago

@Muddy you're talking about the pardons as though they were commutations. He calls them hostages, not criminals. It's the usual crap, we're supposed to believe everybody but Trump himself about why Trump does what he does.

This was a mob that was trying to cancel the results of an election. You're really going to believe that some of them were just treason tourists, not traitors themselves? Their only defense is to plead stupidity, if they actually believed Trump's lies.

oscarlomax

•

16 hours ago

It was a political move. One criminal gets other criminals off. There's no justice at work here. It's not a left or right thing as much as it's a truth-telling moment of how the laws now mean nothing. It would have been at least somewhat credible to leave the violent offenders in jail. But that's not how the Criminal-In-Chief plays ball. And this is only the beginning of some major chaos to come.

Icey

•

14 hours ago

Muddy supports police brutality against minorities and the death penalty but thinks sentences for insurrection are unreasonable 🤡 💩

ilbbaicnl

•

10 hours ago

Whether they got "normal" sentences, or whether they were singled out are two different issues. The way our system works, in practice, is if you take a plea, you get a much lighter sentence. If someone didn't take a plea, and they got a longer sentence as a result, that's not singling them out.

twentyfive

•

5 hours ago

I'm not paying attention the pardons, he's within his rights. Pay attention instead to how many of these folks that get pardoned re-offend, I saw that one of the released folk has already been re-arrested in Florida.

gammanu95

•

4 hours ago

25iq is not telling the whole story, and thus lying by ommission.
Daniel Ball did not re-offend. He was arrested on a federal gun charge of possession of a firearm by a felon, the gun being discovered during a raid executed on a J6 warrant. The guy was never actually even released from the prison. They filed the warrant for the gun charge and detained him while still in the prison.

gammanu95

•

4 hours ago

Let's be clear. There was no insurrection. The January 6 Select Committee had no legitimacy. It was formed under false pretenses and filled with revenge minded partisans hand-selected by the odious Nancy Pelosi. January 6 can accurately be described as a protest which devolved into a riot. The only charges which should stem from such should be based on the individual actions of the person. Instead, the weaponized federal LE were used to attack civilian who was on the grounds that day- including innocent protestors. This was an egregious abuse of power. Not everyone arrested and convicted was innocent, but it's better to throw out the whole thing because it was based on partisan political persecution. Many of the 1500 freed were American political prisoners. That cannot be tolerated in a free country.

twentyfive

•

3 hours ago

^ Here’s the story asswipe

Ball’s two previous convictions — for domestic violence battery by strangulation in June 2017 and battering and resisting law enforcement with violence in October 2021 — are detailed in the charging papers. He’s accused of possessing a firearm as a convicted felon, around May 2023.

Sounds like a real swell fella

EastCoaster

•

2 hours ago

skibum609, can you clarify the second part of your post “Not a fan of Presidential pardons and the last two have been the worst”?

What were you referring to when you said “the last two”?

– The pardons of the last two presidents?

– The last two pardons made by Biden (even though I wanted posters not to reference pardons made by any other president)?

– The last two pardons Trump made? (And if so, which ones were they at the time you wrote your comment?)

I’m not calling you out, just curious about what you had in mind when you wrote that.

skibum609

•

2 hours ago

Biden and Trumps pardons are a disgrace.

EastCoaster

•

an hour ago

Thanks for the clarification, skibum609.

skibum609

•

an hour ago

Not for the same reasons, just to be clear.