I am in favor of a pardon for J6 protesters, but not all of them. Which ones? Those who posed no threat. Those not convicted or charged with assault or other violent offenses (with one possible exception – see next paragraph), or for inciting violent behavior (like John Earle Sullivan). Ray Epps still hasn’t been thoroughly investigated, so he should not receive a pardon.
The case of Rachel Powell must be reviewed carefully. She claims she broke a window to flee a dangerous situation created by an attack by Capitol defenders that had protesters pressed in a confined area. If there is a strong case for her self-defense argument, pardon her.
The pardon decision must reflect zero tolerance of violence other than justifiable self-defense. The pardon announcement must call attention to prosecutorial abuse, excessively lengthy pretrial detention, and pretrial prison conditions.
Now, on to J6 investigations. Here’s my not-necessarily-comprehensive to-do list.
A highly detailed sequence of events. If military history buffs can put together detailed videos of major battles pinpointing the positions of individual units at specific times, the same can be accomplished here. I want a series of maps in print or video format that show time and location of every single violent incident, whether fomented by the public- or private-sector, and other incidents of note (e.g. pipe bomb discoveries, Senate recess, the moment Capitol security started allowing entry into the building, Trump’s “go home” tweet, Jacob Chansley announcing said tweet), and that also show the location of key persons of interest at those times. This exercise should be valuable to various investigations, and will give the public a better sense of when and where rioting and other violence occurred. I suspect that many people imagine four solid hours of rioting, far more violence than actually occurred. I’m also curious to know how many people who heard the end of Trump’s speech entered the building. Given the walking distance, they would not have arrived yet when windows were being bashed in.
A request for private citizens to submit videos that have not yet been submitted. There may still be some videos out there that haven’t been tuned in out of fear of being railroaded by Biden’s DoJ.
The pipe bombs. Who planted them, and were they subjected to forensic analysis after the Feds exploded the devices? Since they were fitted with one-hour kitchen timers and placed many hours prior to discovery, the bombs either had a different trigger mechanism that wasn’t visible, or no trigger mechanism at all. The latter alternative calls into question whether the bombs even had explosives. They could have been filled with Clairol for all we know.
The use of tear gas and its possible role in inciting violence. Some tear gas rounds were fired deep into the peaceable section of the crowd, as witnessed by J. Michael Waller and documented in this video (first round visible at 1:02).
The decision to allow entry into the building. Who authorized it? At which entrances was entry allowed? I am vaguely aware of a claim that the rioting was mostly on one side of the building and allowed entry was on the other. I’d like some confirmation on that.
The shooting death of Ashli Babbitt.
The origins of the hoax that Brian Sicknick was beaten to death with a fire extinguisher.
The gallows prop. Who built it, and who decided it should not be torn down once it was up? People need to be fired over this.
All other conduct of Capitol defenders.
Prison conditions for J6 protesters in pretrial detention. Inspection teams should be ready to descend on the prison(s) two seconds after Trump takes the oath of office.
Prosecution of J6 defendants. One special concern is the decision to charge about 250 J6 defendants under an evidence tampering provision under Sarbanes-Oxley. How was this decision made? Did anyone in the loop doubt that the statute was genuinely relevant to those cases? Those convictions have since been shot down by SCOTUS. One has to imagine how someone could get the idea that a law concerned with addressing accounting shenanigans could be applied to protesters.
The J6 committee and Jack Smith. Obligatory mention. One issue I’d like to see settled: since the full committee never met, did it have subpoena authority? If not, the cases of those convicted of defying subpoenas should be appealed, not pardoned.
No, the right approach is a blanket pardon for all who have been persecuted by the Leftist Establishment. The process is the punishment, and the people who have been locked up for years have already been punished far beyond societal norms. Compare that to the slaps on the wrist given to genuine Antifa rioters who burned police stations and vandalized private property — and were released uncharged within 24 hours.
There are two consequences I would like to see, but never will.
The first is to impress on Congressscum that they are not special people deserving special treatment — rather, they are mere citizens like the rest of us, chosen as representatives of us. The People’s House should be open to the public 24/7 without any restrictions. Everyone should have full access to the place, including Congressscums’ “private” offices, cafeterias, and bathrooms. Once a bunch of homeless illegal immigrants move in, our “Representatives” might start to take their responsibilities seriously.
The second would be to bring home the message of the Nuremburg Trials to our bureaucracy — Following orders is no excuse for doing something wrong. It would be good to see the bureaucrats, lawyers, judges, prison guards who participated in the abuse of US citizens properly punished for their misdeeds.
Give ’em the Hunter Biden treatment. Pardon all of them, not just for what happened on J6, but for any crimes they committed or may have committed going back 10 years.
Let’s see a full accounting for the number for FBI agents present. Were any inciting violence?
Agree with Gavin. Anyone who was there has been living under a sword of Damocles for the last four years. Even for those who are still “free,” the fear of arrest at any time, fear of pursuing a normal career, fear for one’s family, etc., have been more than sufficient punishment for any offenses that were committed on J6. Add to that the fact that those arrested are political prisoners and the gross perversion of the legal system to punish only those on one side of the political spectrum, and the idea of continuing the persecution is not only wrong but grotesquely so.
Blanket pardons for all. There are no “violent ones” who were not working for the feds. Once the admin started down that rabbit hole, it would be years before any were granted. These are political prisoners held incommunicado and without access to bail. Free them ASAP.
Agreed. Pardon them all. If some of our alleged “representatives” and their lackeys got hurt, who cares? The tree of liberty, etc..
Blanket sweeping pardons. With the exception that the individuals be investigated to confirm they weren’t ANTIFA, BLM, or FBI or other LEO plants and scum. I’m tired of this pussy nonsense about only pardoning the non-violent offenders. Any violence that occurred on J6, and not by the excepted groups I just named, were both provoked and justified. What happened during the 2020 election and the Covid tyranny justified far more than anything that happened on J6. I’m tire of living under totalitarian leftist tyranny, it has to end by any and all means necessary. Insurrection my ass.
I must disagree with you, and agree with Col. Schlichter:
https://townhall.com/columnists/kurtschlichter/2024/12/05/trump-needs-to-pardon-all-the-j6-political-prisoners-on-day-one-n2648598
Pardon them ALL, and then require reparations from the DoJ. Then start investigating and where appropriate prosecuting those government “workers” who inappropriately prosecuted, convicted, sentenced and then tortured them in jail, all based solely on political influence. Indict Michael “Where’s My Glock” Byrd for 2nd degree murder based on the video evidence and that of eye witnesses. Dig out all of the information on the hundreds of undercover FBI, DoJ, and probably CIA who were there, and prosecute the agents provocateurs.
This wouldn’t be justice, since justice would require doing the same thing to them that they’ve done to others, including torture and murder. This would be mercy.
Metaphorically nuke those bastards, and then make the rubble bounce. It’s the only way to be sure it doesn’t happen again soon.
The idea that it would be possible to untangle the blatantly corrupt investigation and prosecution to find some possible culpability is ludicrous. Pardon them all, that sort of miscarriage of justice was what the power was intended for, not sheltering of floridly guilty sociopathic drug addicts from the consequences they so richly deserve.
You want to see what an insurrection looks like, go to Damascus. A full accounting of the treatment of the prisoners with full criminal consequences for those that deserve them, might go a little ways toward restoring some credibility to the DOJ.
Of course there should be a blanket pardon of everyone imprisoned for the J6 event followed up by a huge payday for each of them and prosecution of the regime minions who orchestrated the entire charade- including the Feds who were reportedly actively working to get the crowd to enter the Capitol.
Anyway, I’m old enough to remember when Watergate was regarded as a terrible scandal and now- having lived through the Obama years, the Trump first term, and the not-Biden era- I wonder just what the heck the fuss was about.
The J6 scandal is at least a thousand times worse than Watergate. For example, I’ve never heard of anyone committing suicide because of the Watergate break-in nor was anyone shot by police for no reason back then.
But the point of the Watergate scandal was to rid the Deep State of the day of its hated nemesis and it worked. Similarly, the point of the J6 scandal was to rid our present day Deep State of its nemesis- and it failed catastrophically.
I wrote in one of my comments that I thought Trump was invulnerable to anything the Deep State could throw at him- and a big part of the why is that most people have noticed the despicable double standard that regime-favored leftists enjoy when compared to everyone else.
The Deep State of yore was able to oust Nixon because they were able to undermine his political support to the extent that he was forced to resign. That was because Nixon was widely believed to have broken the law when that was actually seen to matter. The Deep State of today has been unable to undermine the political support for Trump because it has spent all of my adult life mocking the rule of law and ignoring it whenever convenient.
Oft evil will shall evil mar.
Since the vast majority of those targeted by Garland’s DOJ couldn’t realistically even be accused of trespassing, felony prosecutions are an abomination. Pardon everyone. A few window-breakers and cop-pushers will be included, but I don’t care, as long as the 98% who weren’t actually committing crimes are pardoned. Then DOJ can start soliciting claims and cutting checks for those prosecuted, arrested, and imprisoned. $10,000 per day in jail sounds reasonable. The coming reduction in head-count at DOJ will free up money for a settlement fund.