Armed with his thumping electoral mandate, President-elect Donald Trump has a golden opportunity to do justice and restore order in America.
But he could also easily blow that by issuing a blanket amnesty to deplorable January 6 rioters who caused real bloodshed and chaos.
‘I’m going to be acting very quickly. First day,’ he told NBC News in an interview this weekend when discussing his plans to pardon rioters.
That is concerning indeed.
Instead of acting like President Joe Biden, the moment calls for asking what Democrats would do… and doing the opposite.
Yes, Biden’s scandalous pardon of his wayward son Hunter does give Trump a lot of political cover to hand out pardons once he is sworn in as president again. And there could be more to come: Biden aides are reportedly talking about pardoning all sorts of people in Washington, including – most preposterously – former chief medical advisor to the president Dr. Anthony Fauci.
But none of that means Trump has to follow suit. After all, Biden’s Democrats weren’t just wrong; they also lost the election. Americans don’t want more of the status quo.
Trump has survived the Democrats’ four-year drumbeat over January 6, which dominated the campaign, to secure the biggest Republican victory in a generation. He even survived a January 6 indictment by Biden’s special Justice Department prosecutor Jack Smith. Clearly, voters are happy to consign the whole sorry chapter to history.
Armed with his thumping electoral mandate, President-elect Donald Trump has a golden opportunity to do justice and restore order in America.
But he could also easily blow that by issuing a blanket amnesty to deplorable January 6 rioters who caused real bloodshed and chaos.
But they also elected Trump to end the disorder that prevailed under Biden, and bring sanity to a weaponized justice system which has committed itself to political witch hunts while letting violent criminals go free. Trump needs to break the rotten cycle and end the madness – not perpetuate it.
After the George Floyd summer of 2020, Democratic prosecutors gave a pass to rioters on their own side. Kamala Harris helped raise money to bail out rioters in Minnesota, and then picked as her 2024 running mate the governor who let them run wild in the first place.
Even the BLM rioters who got convicted received unduly light sentences, such as ten years for a fatal arson. In 2021, a man who set fire to a Portland, Oregon courthouse got a probation deal from Biden’s Justice Department. In 2022, Colinford Mattis and Urooj Rahman – two white-shoe New York lawyers who threw Molotov cocktails into a police car – did that one better when Biden’s prosecutors agreed to shorten their sentences (to a just a year, and to 15 months respectively).
Voters noticed. Mike Schmidt, the district attorney in Portland who bent over backwards to sympathize with BLM rioters and declined to prosecute most of them, lost his re-election bid in May this year. Other criminal-coddling DAs have met a similar fate.
What needs to happen after major riots is for the government to throw the book at people who commit violence and property damage. And we need to do it in a very public way to make examples and send a message that civil disorder won’t be tolerated.
The Biden Democrats did that to the January 6 rioters. It was the right idea. But they refused to do the same to the rioters on their own side, and that is the real scandal.
It’s also true that a big dragnet like the January 6 prosecutions is bound to generate some injustices. The current administration has spent tens of millions of dollars and charged over 1,500 people in connection with that fateful day.
In fact, in June this year, the Supreme Court ruled that federal prosecutors had been too heavy handed and had improperly charged many of the rioters.
But that was little balm to the defendants – many of them non-violent – whose cases have yet to produce a conviction, and who have now spent four years under threat of jail time. Some were also detained before trial for long periods.
For those non-violent protestors who did no property damage, that process should surely serve as punishment enough.
Of course, it is worth stating firmly that the clash at the Capitol included very real crimes. It was a dark day for American democracy and an undoubted stain on Trump’s record.
Quite a number of those who have been charged, many of them convicted, assaulted cops.
Trump should ‘Back the Blue’ and cross off from any pardon list anybody who committed assaults against law enforcement.
Of course, it is worth stating firmly that the clash at the Capitol included very real crimes. It was a dark day for American democracy and an undoubted stain on Trump’s record.
Trump should ‘Back the Blue’ and cross off from any pardon list anybody who committed assaults against law enforcement.
There have also been many convictions for property damage. Some of the stiffest sentences for such crimes might, upon careful review, merit reductions. But they don’t deserve a pardon and nor should they get one.
Trump likes to talk in big, broad terms. And, to his credit, he has at least said there ‘may be some exceptions’ to his January 6 pardon promise.
If he takes care to tell the difference between the worst offenders and the rest, then he can send the message he was elected to send: American justice is back action.
If he gets carried in a blanket pardon for violent criminals, it will be a worrying start to his administration.
