The danger of Trump’s promise to pardon J6 defendants

President-elect Donald Trump has been talking for years about pardoning the people who took part in the January 6, 2021, insurrection, and he could do so on day one of his second term.

In a March post on his social media network Truth Social, he said he would “Free the January 6 Hostages being wrongfully imprisoned!” In 2022, Trump promised full pardons and apologies, and claimed he was financially supporting people associated with the insurrection. All that culminated last weekend when, in an interview with NBC News’s Kristen Welker, Trump again said he may pardon people who had been convicted of crimes related to the insurrection.

Those pardons would be well within the president’s powers. And they would be a remarkable victory for a collection of groups that have spent the last few years agitating for them. They would also provide Trump with a political win, allowing him to simultaneously reward some of his most fervent supporters while also undermining a legal system he has long claimed is unjust.  

Who are the insurrectionists? What charges do they face?

There are roughly 1,500 arrested, charged, or imprisoned January 6 insurrectionists, and among their number are all sorts of people.

The January 6 defendants aren’t just hard-boiled leaders of militant groups; the insurrectionists included an actor, small-business owners, and even a self-proclaimed shaman, many of whom voiced a belief in conspiracy theories. However, some of the January 6 insurrectionists were affiliated with a variety of radical anti-government movements, most notably the Proud Boys and the Oath Keepers, right-wing paramilitary groups recognized as hate groups by the Southern Poverty Law Center. 

Those convicted have been found guilty of a range of crimes, from low-level offenses like trespassing or property damage to grave offenses like seditious conspiracy.   

How did pardoning the insurrectionists become a cause for those on the far right?

The push for freeing insurrectionists has its roots in the false assertion, popularized by Trump, that the 2020 presidential election was rigged. That false claim, based on a variety of conspiracy theories, asserts that the 2020 election was improper; thus the insurrectionists were justified in taking action. Furthermore, the insurrectionists’ supporters claim, Justice Department investigations into Trump show that it is weaponized against those on the right, and that makes the prosecution against insurrectionists improper and invalid. 

Trump has encouraged this line of thinking, repeatedly claiming that the DOJ is being weaponized against him and his supporters, often saying, as he did following an indictment, “They’re coming after you — and I’m just standing in their way.”

As the trials of insurrectionists unfolded, several groups began to work to draw attention to the trials and recast them as persecution. One leader of these efforts is Micki Witthoeft, the mother of Ashli Babbitt, a woman shot and killed by a Capitol Police officer during the insurrection. (The officer was investigated by the DOJ; he was cleared of any wrongdoing.) Witthoeft moved to Washington, DC, from San Diego to support January 6 defendants and hold vigils in support of the cause.  

Trump has supported the narrative that January 6 defendants are the victims, with Babbitt cast as a martyr and the convicted as “political prisoners.” To be clear, they’re in prison not for expressing political beliefs but for interfering with the political process, committing serious violence, and other crimes. 

Now, there is a constellation of pro-insurrectionist groups, like Justice for January 6 (J4J6), American Patriot Relief, J6 Pardon Project, and stophate.com, all of which have called for pardons. Proud Boys leadership has requested clemency, and a slew of other groups and individuals associated with the January 6 insurrectionists have asked for pardons, too. 

What happens if Trump does pardon the insurrectionists?

A pardon would help validate two arguments that Trump has made: that the Justice Department was weaponized against him and his supporters and that the 2020 election was “rigged.”

It would also help to fully bring the insurrectionists — many of whom are aligned with the far right — into the GOP fold.

“I think we can look at the movement behind the pardoning, the desire for those individuals to be pardoned, as part and parcel of the mainstreaming of the extremist elements that comprised the Stop the Steal movement now becoming a centralized part of a mainstream political party in the United States,” Matthew Kriner, managing director of the Accelerationism Research Consortium at Middlebury Institute, told Vox.

January 6 insurrectionists have already started running for office themselves, and once freed, those now imprisoned could join their number. Groups like Look Ahead America are not only advocating on behalf of January 6 defendants, but also engaging in political organizing, including voter registration, turnout, and lobbying efforts — all on behalf of the Republican Party.

Pardoned insurrectionists could also go back to the groups that radicalized them in the first place. Some of these groups, like the Oath Keepers, have essentially collapsed following the imprisonment of their leaders, but right-wing antigovernment groups are still plenty active in the US. 

A pardon would mean that some of the more extreme insurrectionists could see themselves as having been “given a permission structure to use politically motivated violence,” Kriner said. It’s “a clean slate for them to come back and essentially pick right back up where they were before.”