Opinion: Trump’s Jan. 6 pardons broke his promise to the nation

Promises made, promises kept, President Trump liked to crow during his first term, sometimes deservedly.

He’s only days into his second term and already he’s making that claim after a torrent of executive orders. In no case is his boast more justified, if shameful, than for his Day 1 blanket order pardoning 1,583 rioters who stormed the Capitol on Jan. 6, 2021, commuting the sentences of those most responsible — and violent — and dismissing all remaining cases.

Trump vowed at rallies throughout his 2024 campaign that once back in office he’d immediately free “the J-6 hostages.” Yet in keeping that promise, he broke a long-forgotten one on the same subject. He made it not at a political rally but in a videotaped recording at the White House, a day after the seven-hour insurrection was put down and as he faced bipartisan condemnation for his complicity.

Opinion Columnist

Jackie Calmes

Jackie Calmes brings a critical eye to the national political scene. She has decades of experience covering the White House and Congress.

The president who’d inspired the mob to try to keep him in power began that evening by calling Jan. 6 not a “day of love” among patriots, as he says these days, but a “heinous attack on the United States Capitol.” And then, still sounding like a normal president, Trump said this:

“Like all Americans, I am outraged by the violence, lawlessness and mayhem. I immediately deployed the National Guard and federal law enforcement to secure the building and expel the intruders. America is and must always be a nation of law and order. The demonstrators who infiltrated the Capitol have defiled the seat of American democracy. To those who engaged in the acts of violence and destruction, you do not represent our country. And to those who broke the law, you will pay.”

At the time, the only lies in that passage seemed to be Trump’s contention that he “immediately deployed” forces to quell the tumult that directly or indirectly caused the deaths of nine people, including five police officers. Now we know the whole thing was a lie: Trump wasn’t outraged. He didn’t really condemn the “demonstrators” — they were pro-Trump, after all, as shown by the banners on poles that were weaponized against police. He didn’t care that they were lawless or violent despite the carnage he witnessed watching hours of televised coverage alone in the White House, ignoring aides’ and family members’ pleas to intervene.

Most of all, Trump didn’t really believe his rioters should “pay.”

And now, just as Trump has paid no price for his role as the instigator of Jan. 6, he’s wiped the books clean for all the attackers, negating verdicts by scores of juries of their peers.

A couple of examples of his freed “hostages”: David Dempsey of Santa Ana, Calif., a man with a criminal history who pleaded guilty and got 20 years in prison, reflecting his cruelty against police. Read the prosecution report: Dempsey clambered over other rioters, using “his hands, feet, flag poles, crutches, pepper spray, broken pieces of furniture, and anything else he could get his hands on” to batter officers trying to protect the Capitol and those within, including Trump’s vice president.

And Daniel “DJ” Rodriguez of Fontana, Calif., who ran an online site for the so-called PATRIOTS45MAGA Gang that mobilized militants to come to the Capitol; once there, he pummeled police with a fire extinguisher, poles and a stun gun, which he repeatedly thrust into the neck of D.C. police Officer Michael Fanone, who suffered a heart attack among other injuries. “Tazzzzed the f— out of the blue,” Rodriguez posted afterward. Inside the Capitol, he vandalized offices, broke windows and stole items. He was sentenced to 12 years.

By Tuesday, two of the feds’ biggest gets — far-right militia leaders Enrique Tarrio of the Proud Boys (22 years) and Stewart Rhodes of the Oath Keepers (18 years) — likewise walked out of prisons. “The notion that Stewart Rhodes could be absolved of his actions is frightening and ought to be frightening to anyone who cares about democracy in this country,” U.S. District Judge Amit Mehta, who presided over his trial, said last month, anticipating Trump’s action.

So many such stories. And yet Trump’s order tells a grotesquely false one: “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.”

Now-retired officer Fanone, who courageously testified to the House Jan. 6 committee and received death threats because of it, isn’t feeling reconciled. With all six of his identified attackers now free (and free to own guns), he posted on Instagram: “My family, my children and myself are less safe today because of Donald Trump and his supporters.”

The prevaricator in chief has also essentially made liars of those around him. Vice President JD Vance told Fox News Sunday a week before, “If you committed violence on that day, obviously you shouldn’t be pardoned.” Obviously? And Pam Bondi, Trump’s nominee for attorney general, testified days later at her Senate confirmation hearing that pardons would be decided “on a case-by-case basis. And I abhor violence to police officers.” If confirmed, she’ll now enforce Trump’s all-encompassing dictate, ensuring that jails and court dockets are cleared of those who beat hundreds of police officers.

What’s galling is that Republicans, rather than simply condemning Trump, are drawing a false equivalence between his action and former President’s Biden’s last-minute preemptive pardon of his siblings and their spouses. Biden deserves blame — lots — for giving Republicans that opening, despite Trump’s explicit threat of legal retribution against his family. Yet there’s no comparison between Biden’s simply objectionable pardons and Trump’s execrable blanket clemency for the traitorous.

Trump kept a campaign promise, a repugnant one, but in the process broke the earlier, fitting one — to make them pay. And with the Jan. 6 pardons, he made a mockery of the rule of law. On his first day as president.

@jackiekcalmes