This is an adapted excerpt from the Jan. 22 episode of “All In with Chris Hayes.”
On Day 1 of Donald Trump’s new presidency, he could have made a point of pardoning a thousand or so Jan. 6 defendants who were not violent criminals. He could have directed the Justice Department to begin a review of all Jan. 6 defendants’ cases — to distinguish between simple trespassers and rioters who assaulted cops with sticks, bats, bear spray and stun guns. That was, after all, what Trump’s vice president, JD Vance, had told reporters they were going to do in the lead-up to the inauguration.
But that is not what Trump did. Instead, he pardoned or commuted the sentences of roughly 1,500 convicted and accused criminal defendants in the Jan. 6 attack across the board. And, according to new behind-the-scenes reporting from NBC News, it was all a last-minute decision by Trump — a decision that seems to have been based mostly on vibes, an indiscriminate approach that shocked even many in Trump’s inner circle.
He let them all out, including, as The Wall Street Journal editorial board put it, “The Jan. 6 Cop Beaters.” They added: “Law and order? Back the blue? What happened to that GOP?”
Trump even made a point of freeing the leaders of the Proud Boys and Oath Keepers militias, literal traitors to the country who tried to violently overthrow its constitutional order, as outlined in their convictions for seditious conspiracy.
Some of those he freed are now promising to seek retribution. On Tuesday, Enrique Tarrio, former leader of the Proud Boys, who was pardoned by Trump, told conspiracy theorist Alex Jones:
We went through hell, and I’m gonna tell you, it was worth it, because what we stood for and what those guys stood for was what we’ve been fighting for and what we saw yesterday on the inauguration stage … Now it’s our turn. I’m happy that the president’s focusing not on retribution and focusing on success, but I will tell you that I’m not gonna play by those rules. The people who did this, they need to feel the heat.
There’s a track record we should remember here. Trump was president once before and his use of the pardon power back then was totally unorthodox, too.
Within the Justice Department, there’s an Office of the Pardon Attorney to handle this process. It has existed for more than a hundred years. But back in 2020, Trump bypassed it on his way out the door and relied on his own whims, pardoning a weird hodgepodge of criminals and defendants.
In 2022, an ABC News analysis of “the 238 people who were pardoned or had their sentences commuted during the Trump administration found at least 10 who have since faced legal scrutiny — either because they are under investigation, are charged with a crime or are already convicted.”
Those 10 include Jesse Benton, a Republican political operative who previously worked for Sens. Rand Paul and Mitch McConnell. Benton was convicted in 2016 of concealing payments he made to a state senator in exchange for a campaign endorsement.
Two years after Trump pardoned Benton, he was convicted on six more federal counts. This time for funneling illegal donations to the Trump campaign on behalf of a Russian naval officer turned multilevel marketer. That Russian national’s donation got him entry to the Republican National Convention and a personal photo with Trump.
The DOJ pardon process exists to prevent this kind of repeat offending. And on his first full day on the job, Trump again skipped over that process, to pardon six times the number of people he pardoned in his entire first term as president.
That includes another pardon that got very little attention Tuesday. After spending the past decade campaigning on the scourge of fentanyl and a deadly epidemic of opioid addiction, Trump gave a full pardon to a guy named Ross Ulbricht, the creator of the Silk Road marketplace, one of the biggest illegal drug markets in American history. A jury found Ulbricht guilty of charges including drug trafficking, and conspiracies to commit money laundering and computer hacking. He was sentenced to two life terms plus 40 years without parole, plus a fine of $183 million. But Ulbricht has a cult following among libertarians and crypto fanboys — groups Trump was looking to court ahead of last year’s election. Trump’s blanket pardon for Jan. 6 rioters isn’t politically popular, it polls terribly. “If you vote for me, on Day One I will commute the sentence of Ross Ulbricht to a sentence of time served,” Trump told the Libertarian National Convention back in May. But Trump didn’t just commute his sentence — which by the way might have been defensible — he issued a total pardon to a guy who was convicted of facilitating the sale of an estimated $200 million of illegal drugs and illicit goods. It was a straight political quid pro quo. Don’t take my word for it, take Trump’s. In a post on Truth Social, Trump wrote, “I just called the mother of Ross William Ulbricht to let her know that in honor of her and the Libertarian Movement, which supported me so strongly, it was my pleasure to have just signed a full and unconditional pardon of her son, Ross.” Trump’s blanket pardon for Jan. 6 rioters isn’t politically popular, it polls terribly. But he doesn’t care. Trump’s a term-limited, 78-year-old man who already has what he wanted most, a get-out-of-jail-free card and a few more years of adoration. So, he is paying back the people whose support he relies on, the people who stood back and stood by when he told them to. Now they are free and pledging their fealty to him. But it doesn’t mean there won’t be political consequences. Allison Detzel contributed.
Chris Hayes hosts “All In with Chris Hayes” at 8 p.m. ET Tuesday through Friday on MS NOW. He is the editor-at-large at The Nation. A former fellow at Harvard University’s Edmond J. Safra Foundation Center for Ethics, Hayes was a Bernard Schwartz Fellow at the New America Foundation. His latest book is “The Sirens’ Call: How Attention Became the World’s Most Endangered Resource” (Penguin Press).
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