LEILA FADEL, HOST:
President Trump issued pardons and commutations to every single defendant charged and convicted in connection with the January 6, 2021, attack on the U.S. Capitol.
A MARTÍNEZ, HOST:
Yeah, that includes people convicted of assaulting police on that day with bats, poles, pepper spray and other weapons. More than 140 officers were injured on January 6, and their injuries included crushed spinal discs, traumatic brain injuries and a heart attack.
FADEL: NPR's Tom Dreisbach has been covering the attack and the pardons, and he joins me now. Good morning.
TOM DREISBACH, BYLINE: Good morning.
FADEL: So take us through the pardons and the commutations that Trump issued.
DREISBACH: Right, so almost every single defendant got a full, unconditional pardon. That means their conviction is forgiven. If they're locked up, they get released. If they were convicted of a felony, they get their gun rights back. And that group includes more than 400 people charged or convicted of violent assaults on law enforcement - driving a stun gun into an officer's neck, for example, beating officers with a bat. And then just 14 people are getting these commutations. So they still have a felony on the record, but they are getting out of prison. And all of those people are linked to the far-right groups involved in January 6, the Oath Keepers and the Proud Boys. Most of that group were convicted of seditious conspiracy. But I should say, the headline here is everyone charged in connection with January 6 - whether they pleaded guilty or lost at trial, whether they assaulted cops or not, whether they were found to be violent extremists or not - they are all getting relief from Trump.
FADEL: I mean, it's not a surprise, right? Trump had promised pardons for January 6 rioters for years. But were you surprised by the scope?
DREISBACH: Well, yeah, members of the incoming administration had said this would not happen. Vice President JD Vance told Fox News earlier this month that, quote, "obviously" they should not pardon people who assaulted police. In fact, Trump has embraced, however, even the violent January 6 defendants for years. At his rallies, he featured a song with the January 6 defendants recorded on a jailhouse phone singing "The Star-Spangled Banner." He calls them hostages, says they were treated unfairly. And even rioters were attending inaugural events, including a rioter named Timothy Hale-Cusanelli, who prosecutors described as a Nazi sympathizer. And he once went to work at a naval base with a Hitler mustache, compared Orthodox Jews to a plague of locusts. And he actually posted his invite to the inauguration on social media.
FADEL: Wow. Where does this leave the January 6 cases?
DREISBACH: Well, federal law enforcement said that January 6 and the attack then was an act of domestic terrorism, and they launched the largest single criminal investigation in the history of the Justice Department in response. Trump has essentially undone all of that with the stroke of a pen. And for police officers who were hurt, their families, this was the worst-case scenario. They are watching people who assaulted them or their family member get out of prison. Of course, many defendants, on the other hand, are celebrating today. Jacob Chansley, the rioter many people know as the QAnon Shaman, the guy with the horns that was seen in the Capitol...
FADEL: Right.
DREISBACH: He said he's going to buy some guns now that he can legally. And then there's the larger concern I've heard from counterterrorism experts, extremism experts that this essentially is an endorsement of political violence by the incoming Trump administration, as long as that violence is against Trump's opponents. The Proud Boys have kept a much lower profile since January 6, but they were actually back out on the streets of D.C. on Inauguration Day. And given their history of violence, that has a lot of people worried.
FADEL: That's NPR's Tom Dreisbach. Thank you so much for your reporting.
DREISBACH: Thanks, Leila.
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