[[link removed]]

TRUMP’S PARDONS ARE SENDING A CRYSTAL-CLEAR MESSAGE  
[[link removed]]


 

Ali Breland
January 21, 2025
The Atlantic
[[link removed]]


*
[[link removed]]
*
[[link removed]]
*
*
[[link removed]]

_ After the January 6 attacks, right-wing militias went underground.
Now they have permission to come out of hiding. _

, Illustration by Allison Zaucha / The Atlantic

 

In the hours after Donald Trump returned to power, Jacob Chansley,
already in a celebrating mood, became exuberant. Chansley, who is also
known as the QAnon Shaman, a nickname he earned for the horned costume
he wore during the attack on the U.S. Capitol in 2021, did what any
red-blooded MAGA American might have done in his situation. “I GOT A
PARDON BABY!” Chansley posted on X last night. “NOW I AM GONNA BUY
SOME MOTHA FU*KIN GUNS!!!”

In the lead-up to Inauguration Day, Trump had spent a lot of time
talking about getting revenge on his political enemies. But in one of
his first moves as president, Trump decided to treat his supporters to
some forgiveness. Last night, he pardoned all of the nearly 1,600
people who had been convicted for their involvement in the Capitol
riots. He commuted the sentences of 14 insurrectionists who remained
in prison, allowing them to go free. Paired with his order for the
attorney general to dismiss “all pending indictments,” Trump has
effectively let everyone convicted for their actions in the January 6
attack off the hook.

In Trump’s telling, the people he pardoned were viciously and
unfairly punished for what happened at the Capitol. Yesterday, he
called the rioters “hostages.” Some of those pardoned included
goofy characters, such as Chansley, who seemingly did not arrive at
the Capitol
[[link removed]] intending
to overthrow the government but got swept up in the moment. Chansley
wasn’t exactly going out of his way to avoid the chaos of the day,
however: He left a note on then–Vice President Mike Pence’s desk
that said, “It’s only a matter of time, justice is coming.”
Among those pardoned was Adam Christian Johnson, otherwise known as
“lectern guy”: On January 6, he carried then–House Speaker Nancy
Pelosi’s podium around the Capitol, smiling and waving in
a now-viral photo
[[link removed]].
“I’m ashamed to have been a part of it,” he said to a judge in
February 2022
[[link removed]],
before he was ordered to pay a $5,000 fine and sentenced to 75 days in
jail. “Got a pardon … now … about my lectern,” Johnson wrote
on X [[link removed]] before
later asking Trump to free the men imprisoned for plotting to kidnap
Michigan Governor Gretchen Whitmer.

Among the rioters granted clemency by President Trump there are also
longtime militia leaders who planned carefully for the riot. They have
been implicated in actively conspiring to violently overtake the
Capitol and attack police officers. Stewart Rhodes, the founder of the
Oath Keepers militia group, and Kelly Meggs, who led its Florida
chapter, were among the 14 people whose sentences were commuted.
Meggs allegedly participated
[[link removed]] with
his wife in weapons training to prepare for the attack. Before the
president intervened, both were slated to spend more than a decade in
prison after being convicted of seditious conspiracy. According to
the Department of Justice
[[link removed]],
Rhodes and Meggs had organized “teams that were prepared and willing
to use force and to transport firearms and ammunition into Washington,
D.C.,” and tried “to oppose, by force, the lawful transfer of
presidential power.”

Of the 14 people whose remaining prison sentences were commuted by
Trump, nine were affiliated with the Oath Keepers and five with the
Proud Boys, another violent far-right group. At least one other
militia leader was outright pardoned: Enrique Tarrio, a former head of
the Proud Boys, is now free long before the end of his 22-year
sentence. Though he wasn’t in Washington during the insurrection,
Tarrio egged on Proud Boys who entered the Capitol, posting on social
media that he was “proud of my boys and my country” and telling
his supporters, “Don’t fucking leave” moments after
[[link removed].] rioters
entered the Capitol. In private messages, he took credit for the
attack: “Make no mistake,” he wrote
[[link removed]],
“we did this.” Some of the Proud Boys, including top members Joe
Biggs and Zachary Rehl, went inside the Capitol, where they
“overwhelmed officers,” according to the Department of Justice.
Biggs was sentenced to 17 years in prison and Rehl to 15.

Of course, it wasn’t just militia members who seemingly arrived at
the Capitol with violence in mind. Also among those pardoned was Eric
Munchel, who was sentenced to nearly five years in prison after
entering the Capitol clad in a tactical vest and carrying zip ties,
with which he intended to “take senators hostage,” according to
the judge
[[link removed]] who
heard his case. The most important part of the pardons isn’t
specifically who is released from prison, but the meaning of Trump’s
gesture: Radical militias are free to act with impunity—as long as
they’re loyal to Trump. Should an extremist on the right break the
law, he can reasonably hope for Trump to pluck him out of the justice
system. This is one of the key ingredients to the perpetuation of
political violence
[[link removed]] across
society—a belief among those who might carry it out that they can do
so, and that they’ll get away with it.

In that sense, the pardons mark what’s to come. The insurrection was
the culmination of increased militia activity during the first Trump
administration. But after the riot, as law-enforcement agencies began
to prosecute those involved, the militias went underground. Groups
such as the Oath Keepers and Proud Boys continued to operate while
many of their leaders and members were in prison, but in a less
publicly visible
[[link removed].] way
than before. Even without militia groups operating at their peak
levels, political violence, particularly by the right, has
been ascendant over the past several years
[[link removed]].
Now, after the pardons, right-wing extremists no longer have to hide.

_Ali Breland [[link removed]] is a
staff writer at The Atlantic._

* Presidential Pardons
[[link removed]]
* right wing violence
[[link removed]]

*
[[link removed]]
*
[[link removed]]
*
*
[[link removed]]

 

 

 

INTERPRET THE WORLD AND CHANGE IT

 

 

Submit via web
[[link removed]]

Submit via email
Frequently asked questions
[[link removed]]
Manage subscription
[[link removed]]
Visit xxxxxx.org
[[link removed]]

Twitter [[link removed]]

Facebook [[link removed]]

 




[link removed]

To unsubscribe, click the following link:
[link removed]