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In Trump's pardons for Jan 6 rioters, a tale of two realities

Jan 21, 2025 10:30 PM IST

The President first constructed a new political narrative and then bent the law to its direction in a rewriting of reality

Washington: President Donald Trump issued a full and unconditional pardon to almost all those convicted of participating in the attack on the US Capitol, instructed the Department of Justice to drop cases against others who stand accused, and commuted the sentences of those convicted of more serious offences in an audacious attempt to rewrite recent history.

US President Donald Trump signs executive orders in the Oval Office of the White House in Washington, DC, on January 20. (AFP) PREMIUM
US President Donald Trump signs executive orders in the Oval Office of the White House in Washington, DC, on January 20. (AFP)

In one of his first actions as the 47th President of the United States, Trump issued an executive order titled “Granting pardons and commutation of sentences for certain offences relating to events at or near the United States Capitol on January 6, 2021”. The preface read, “This proclamation ends a grave national injustice that has been perpetrated upon the American people over the last four years and begins a process of national reconciliation.”

Trump’s decision came just hours after his predecessor, former President Joe Biden, issued his own set of pre-emptive pardons to members of the January 6 select committee of the House of the Representatives, including former Republican Congresswoman Liz Cheney, that had investigated the January 6 mob attack and held Trump responsible. Biden said he was issuing them pardon not because they had done anything wrong but to protect them from politically motivated attacks.

In those pardons lies the story of January 6, America’s two radically different interpretation of what happened that day, and Trump’s success in ensuring that his narrative of what happened prevails, despite it being in stark contrast with visual evidence, multiple independent reports, journalistic reportage and court judgments.

The reality of January 6

Here is what is known about January 6, 2021 based on evidence already in the public domain.

The events of that day began almost two months earlier when Trump refused to accept the 2020 election results that clearly confirmed a Biden victory. Trump’s legal challenges, at every level, in every state failed. He pushed loyalists in key states to present an alternate slate of electors who would certify him as the winner, rather than Biden -- a push that didn’t succeed because of the resistance of legislatures and governors who refused to toe Trump’s line.

He tried to get his Department of Justice (DOJ) to suggest that election fraud had been committed, an assertion that his own attorney general rejected. Trump then sought to pressure his vice president, Mike Pence, to block the certification of the results in his role as the Senate president presiding over the joint session of the Congress. Pence argued that he had not seen evidence of fraud and did not have the power to block the results, an assertion that infuriated Trump even more.

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Trump called a massive rally of his supporters in Washington DC on January 6. In his speech, he repeated his claims about the election, and encouraged the protestors to march to the Capitol. The mob then waked up the Hill, stormed the Capitol, destroyed the barricades, shouted slogans against the Vice President (“Hang Mike Pence”), assaulted and killed law enforcement personnel, damaged precious Capitol property, forced America’s lawmakers to flee and hide in adjacent buildings and underground. Trump watched all of this on television and it took him hours before calling on protesters to stop.

The events of January 6 shocked America and the world. They alienated even the Republican Congressional leadership from Trump and they distanced themselves from a man whose political career seemed over. The House impeached Trump for his role. Later accounts showed how far-Right conspiratorial groups, including Proud Boys, were complicit in the attacks and had planned them meticulously. For the past four years, the DOJ conducted a rigorous investigation, and through a legal process, secured conviction of over 1,200 out of the close to 1,600 people charged for the attack.

An alternate reality

In an interview to Bob Woodward and Carl Bernstein, recounted in Woodward’s latest book, Trump, in 1989, explained to the legendary reporters his basic philosophy when confronted with a challenge. “Never fold. If you fold, it causes you much more trouble than it is worth...if people know you are a folder, if people know you are going to be weak, they are going to go after you.”

Trump used that to not just “fold” after the 2020 results, but did not “fold” even after the January 6 attacks. He distanced himself from the violent attack initially and rejected any accusations that his actions had created the conditions for the mob attack. His supporters spread conspiracy theories on how it was government agents and the far-Left that had infiltrated peaceful protests and led the attacks to discredit Trump. One by one, Republican leaders started walking back on their fierce condemnation of Trump and began visiting him at Mar-a-Lago. Trump continued to insist that the elections were fraudulent, and an entry ticket to Trump’s court hinged on whether one not just reinforced the former president’s beliefs but also came up with more theories on how he was right, and could be proven right, as recounted in journalist Meridith McGraw’s book, Trump in Exile.

Even as Trump began to plot his political comeback, his theories gained increased traction on the ground with supporters who had found an argument to reject a reality — the reality of a Biden presidency — that they did not like. The fact that elections had happened during Covid and witnessed unprecedented mail-in ballots allowed suspicions to grow among both the unsuspecting and those prone to believing in conspiracies. Polls repeatedly showed that an overwhelming majority of Republicans did not believe that the elections were free and fair. While this alternate reality was being constructed in the political world, in the real legal world, prosecutors and investigators continued to find the culprits behind January 6 and the evidence to secure convictions through America’s rigorous legal processes.

Trump then used the legal cases against him, including two criminal indictments that were related to his role after the elections and in the run up to January 6, to suggest how there had been a “weaponisation” of the justice department: this weaponisation targeted him but also targeted all those convicted of January 6, went Trump’s narrative. He consistently rejected any claim of how protesters had attacked law enforcement officials: he consistently attacked the January 6 select committee, the witnesses who testified there, and the special prosecutor investigating his role as compromised; he began to accuse the then House speaker Nancy Pelosi of refusing to accept security assistance that he ostensibly had offered; and he began reframing January 6 as a “day of love”.

And when he won the 2024 elections, he interpreted that as not just a mandate for the economy and to crack down on illegal immigration but a mandate to rewrite history itself, including history that had played out in real time and broadcast across millions of homes in America and globally. After all, if the American voters had chosen Trump despite what happened on January 6, it was a vindication of what he — and what his supporters — had done on January 6. Trump had called those arrested and convicted for their role that day as “J6 hostages”. And on Monday, he freed those hostages.

Bending law to politics

Trump commuted the sentences of 14 people to time served as on January 20, 2025 and ordered their release.

Trump then granted a “full, complete and unconditional pardon to all other individuals convicted of offences related to events that occurred at or near the United States Capitol on January 6, 2021” with an order for their immediate release.

“I further direct the Attorney General to pursue dismissal with prejudice to the government of all pending indictments against individuals for their conduct related to the events at or near the United States Capitol on January 6, 2021,” the Trump-signed executive order stated.

Among those released on Monday night was Enrique Tarrio, the Proud Boys leader convicted of seditious conspiracy who was sentenced to 22 years in prison. Among those released who have been caught on video attacking law-enforcement officials. Among those released were those who the American judiciary found guilty of subverting democracy and attacking the legislature to block the peaceful transfer of power.

Pelosi, the House speaker that day, issued a statement terming Trump’s pardons to be an “outrageous insult to our justice system” and “the abandonment and betrayal of police officers who put their lives on the line to stop an attempt to subvert the peaceful transfer of power”. But what Pelosi did not take into account, and what Trump understood, was that politics always prevailed over law. The President first constructed a new political narrative and then bent the law to its direction in a rewriting of reality.

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