Trump could pardon nearly 1,600 January 6 rioters. Will he really do it?
Donald Trump has said pardoning his supporters who took part in the January 6 insurrection at the U.S. Capitol four years ago will be one of the top priorities as he starts his new administration.
But how quickly will the pardons begin, and how far will Trump go?
Nearly 1,600 people have been charged with or convicted of crimes linked to the riot, according to the Department of Justice.
That group includes at least 11 people who brought guns to the Capitol, 379 who were charged with assaulting police or journalists, and 13 leaders of far-right militias like the Proud Boys and Oath Keepers convicted of seditious conspiracy.
The rioters brought weapons including guns, chemical spray, axes, tasers, baseball bats, and even a sword to the Capitol, where three people died during the riot and four police officers later died by suicide after fending off the insurrectionists.
Trump has suggested in recent weeks he could begin pardons his first day in office, and may erase the federal charges of every single person involved.
“We’re going to look at each individual case, and we’re going to do it very quickly, and it’s going to start in the first hour that I get into office,” he told TIME magazinelast month. “A vast majority of them should not be in jail. A vast majority should not be in jail, and they’ve suffered gravely,” he added.
The president-elect has said he’d even consider pardoning people who pleaded guilty to attacking police officers, telling NBC News these individuals had “no choice” but to accept the charges.
Though the riot was years ago, it remains a contentious part of the ongoing political discussion.
A majority of Americans oppose Trump’s plans for the pardons, according to a December poll, though a majority of Republicans support him.
On Capitol Hill, GOP figures like Marjorie Taylor Greene have lobbied Trump for universal Capitol riot pardons, while others in the party have downplayed the reality of January 6 itself, when a mob of Trump supporters violently stormed the Capitol to prevent the certification of the 2020 election results.
“On #ThisDayInHistory in 2021, thousands of peaceful grandmothers gathered in Washington, D.C., to take a self-guided, albeit unauthorized, tour of the U.S. Capitol building,” Rep. Mike Collins insisted in a post on X Monday, despite what millions of Americans witnessed on live TV coverage.
Others have tried to underscore what they see as the ongoing vulnerability of U.S. elections after the attempted putsch.
“As we have seen, our democracy is fragile,” Vice President Kamala Harris said in a video statement Monday, the same day she certified Trump’s 2024 win. “And it is up to then each one of us to stand up for our most cherished principles.”
“Although I left the Capitol Police force, I remain haunted by that day,” former Capitol Police Sergeant Aquilino Gonell, who was injured guarding the Capitol, wrote in a New York Times op-ed Sunday. “Now Mr. Trump’s promised actions could erase the justice we’ve risked everything for.”
Trump supporters who were charged with January 6-related crimes are jubilant the Republican is returning to office.
Philip Sean Grillo, 50, who urged rioters to charge, pushed past police to open doors to the Capitol, and smoked marijuana inside the building, reportedly told a courtroom last month during his sentencing, “Trump’s gonna pardon me anyways.”
Those already imprisoned on charges in the storming of the Capitol remain unrepentant, especially those in the Washington D.C. jail dubbed the “Patriot Wing,” for its high number of pro-Trump January 6-ers.
“I haven’t met a single person here who regrets January 6,” Dominic Box, 34, who was charged with felony civil disorder, told New York Magazine last year. “Or who doesn’t think that it was a noble cause.”