President Trump issued pardons for nearly all of the more than 1,500 January 6 defendants on his first day in office, granting most a ‘full, complete and unconditional pardon’ and ordering that individuals in prison be ‘released immediately.’
WASHINGTON, D.C. (LifeSiteNews) -- President Donald Trump has issued pardons for nearly all the more than 1,500 January 6 defendants on his first day in office.
“Tonight I'm going to be signing on the J6 hostages, pardons to get them out,” vowed Trump while attending the inaugural parade held at the Capital One Arena. “I'm going to the Oval Office and we'll be signing pardons for a lot of people.”
“Promises made, Promises kept,” exclaimed Donald Trump, Jr., who posted a video of his father sitting at the Resolute Desk after having followed through on signing the executive order granting full pardons to the J6 prisoners.
The document signed by the president proclaims “a grave national injustice … has been perpetrated upon the American people over the last four years and begins a process of national reconciliation.”
The brief proclamation commutes the sentences of 14 individuals convicted of offenses “related to events that occurred at or near the United States Capitol on January 6, 2021, to time served as of January 20, 2025,” and grants “a full, complete and unconditional pardon to all other individuals convicted of offenses related to events that occurred at or near the United States Capitol on January 6, 2021.”
The order demands that individuals being held in prison be “released immediately” and that all pending indictments against potential J6 defendants be dismissed.
“I will say this, they’ve been in jail for a long time already. I see murderers in this country get two years, one year and maybe no time. So they’ve already been in jail for a long time. These people have been destroyed,” Trump said when asked if any of the pardoned individuals had assaulted police, according to the New York Post (NYP).
“What they’ve done to these people is outrageous. Even people that were aggressive, and in many cases, I believe they happen to be outside agitators. But what do I know? But I think they were. I think they were outside agitators. They were outside agitators. And obviously, the FBI was involved.”
“They’ve been treated very unfair[ly],” said Trump. “The judges have been absolutely brutal. The prosecutors have been brutal. And nobody’s ever treated people in this country like that.”
“What happened in Seattle, where they took over a big portion of the city? What happened in Portland, where they burned down the city every day and people died? Nothing happened to anybody, but they go after these people violently,” noted the president, according to the NYP.
“It’s Washington, D.C. People go into a trial and they say, ‘I have a wonderful lawyer, and I didn’t do anything wrong.’ And they end up in shackles almost immediately and jail. No, we’re not going to let it happen.”
As of late last night, there seemed to be confusion if not resistance or outright defiance to the president’s order by prison guards at the D.C. jail who refused to immediately release J6ers last night.
Sadly, the presidential pardons came too late for four young men – Mark Aungst, Chris Stanton, Jord Meachum, and Matthew Perna – who committed suicide rather than face jail terms for having been associated with the January 6, 2021, event at the U.S. Capitol.
Despite the FBI failing to find evidence that violence at the event was planned or organized, Democrats continued more than a dozen committee investigations into the incident, with hundreds of people arrested. Videos show that many people were let into the Capitol by police and simply walked the halls after the initial breach, as LifeSiteNews’ Calvin Freiburger noted.
“The most troubling aspect of the situation has been the treatment of those arrested. Many non-violent misdemeanor cases (and even some who did nothing more than enter the building) have been subjected to disproportionate treatment and held in abysmal conditions while awaiting trial.”
Now that the J6ers have been pardoned by Trump, pro-life activists across the country are wondering when the more than 20 individuals, similarly unfairly convicted under the FACE Act — some of whom were elderly and infirm at the time of their sentencing — will be granted pardons by the president.
The husband of Bevelyn Williams, a young wife and mother currently serving a prison term for heroically blocking the entrance to an abortion facility during a pro-life protest, was disappointed when he arrived at the prison to take his wife home only to be turned away.
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