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(CNN) — On his first day in office, President Donald Trump granted sweeping clemency to all of the nearly 1,600 people charged in the January 6, 2021, attack on the US Capitol.
Trump pardoned or commuted the sentences of everyone convicted of January 6-related crimes, including hundreds who were guilty of assaulting police. He also ordered the Justice Department to dismiss all pending cases.
The move was the crowning achievement in Trump’s yearslong effort to whitewash the history of January 6, when a mob of thousands of his supporters violently stormed the Capitol and disrupted Congress’ certification of the 2020 election, which he lost.
When Trump took office, federal prosecutors had already secured convictions in about 80% of the nearly 1,600 charged cases, mostly in the form of guilty pleas. About 300 cases were pending in court when Trump directed the Justice Department to dismiss the charges. Only two defendants were acquitted of all charges.
Trump’s pardons and dismissals covered hundreds of people charged with or convicted of violent felony crimes, such as assaulting police officers, using a deadly weapon, participating in a riot and destroying government property.
He took this step even after senior Republicans like Vice President JD Vance and House Speaker Mike Johnson said pardons should not be granted to violent offenders.
While Trump pardoned virtually all of the 1,270 convicted rioters, he withheld pardons for now from 14 members of far-right extremist groups that were charged in the most notorious seditious conspiracy cases. But he still granted them commutations, releasing them from federal prison, where they were serving some of the longest January 6 sentences.
These convicts were members of the Oath Keepers and Proud Boys, and were among the first people to breach the Capitol during the attack. Some were found guilty of seditious conspiracy, while others were acquitted, but all were convicted of other felonies.
The-CNN-Wire
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