Patrick G. Eddington
Fulfilling a 2024 election campaign promise, on January 20, President Trump commuted the sentences of key Oath Keepers and other January 6, 2021, insurrectionists previously convicted of seditious conspiracy or other crimes in the breach of the US Capitol. Among those receiving a commutation was Oath Keeper founder and leader Stewart Rhodes.
In the same executive order, Trump also issued unconditional pardons to more than 1,000 other individuals convicted or pled out for crimes they committed during the attempt to prevent the certification of then President-elect Joe Biden’s 2020 election victory over Trump.
For these first two actions, the only rough parallel I’m aware of is the series of pardon actions taken by Presidents Lincoln and Johnson in the aftermath of the Civil War, and those primarily affected thousands of former Confederate officers and soldiers.
The newly sworn-in chief executive also directed the dismissal with prejudice of all current cases pending for others identified as having violated federal laws during the attack on the Capitol.
It’s this last action by Trump that is the most noteworthy and radical. It represents a direct intervention by Trump in ongoing Department of Justice investigations into the January 6 attempted insurrection.
No doubt Trump and his officials would argue that because they always viewed the January 6‑related investigations and convictions as purely politically motivated, dismissing the remaining cases is justified. Based on the plain text of the statutes used to successfully prosecute people like Rhodes, that argument—like Trump’s commutations and pardons—is as ludicrous as it is self-serving.
Trump did not take these clemency actions in the interest of fostering national healing. He took them because the people who stormed the Capitol, wounded police officers, and threatened the lives of House and Senate members and Trump’s own vice president engaged in that violence on Trump’s behalf to help him try to stay in power in violation of the Constitution. Trump has now repaid their loyalty with commutations, pardons, and case dismissals.
The question now is whether these actions represent a one-off instance of Trump intervening in Justice Department investigations or just the first of other interventions to come.