Why Trump Pardoned the J6 Political Scapegoats

Editor’s Note: Late last evening, Donald Trump pardoned some 1,500 January 6 defendants; the 14 remaining defendants’ sentences he commuted, and their cases will be reviewed for possible pardon. This story was completed and sent to press a few hours before that took place.

When men take it in their heads today to hang gamblers, or burn murderers, they should recollect that, in the confusion usually attending such transactions, they will be as likely to hang or burn someone who is neither a gambler nor a murderer as one who is; and that, acting upon the example they set, the mob of tomorrow, may, and probably will, hang or burn some of them by the very same mistake. — Abraham Lincoln, “The Perpetuations of Our Political Institutions,” January 27, 1838

Donald Trump was a targeted man. While in the midst of his first term as America’s chief executive, he was spied on, harangued, vilified, pursued, lied about, and impeached — twice.

His opponents wounded his effectiveness and divided the country, but failed to remove him from office … until the election in November 2020.

With malfeasant fingers on ballot bags, software manipulation, and a host of other diverse (and quite illegal) election rigging, they succeeded in terminating his presidency. But they weren’t done yet. The coup de grâce took place on January 6, 2021.

The Ultimate Power Play

Trump needed to be branded. The Hitler schtick had to stick. The demonstration that took place at the nation’s Capitol that day was the instrument intended to crush the will of Americans who dared believe in the ossified precepts of the Constitution.

Fast-forward four (very long) years. Somehow, somehow, Donald Trump persevered and is now positioned to be the great rectifier of many wrongs that took place on January 6.

This leaves open the question of how should pardons for those protestors who’ve been wrongfully targeted by the Biden administration be carried out?

Last week, the legal advocacy group Condemned USA published a draft proposal for categorical presidential pardons for J6 political prisoners. Founder, Treniss Evans, who penned the proposal, is gaining traction amongst many influential conservatives, including General Mike Flynn, who posted his support on X.

The 172-page proposal is a deep trove of legal fodder. This particular topic has been a lightning rod in conservative circles as Vice President JD Vance and Pam Bondi, who is poised to become the next U.S. Attorney General, both have alluded to some degree of selectivity in issuing pardons.

The Proposal

Here’s a high-level summation of it:

The proposal outlines several categories of pardons and sentence commutations, and addresses legal errors and constitutional violations that the Biden administration committed while prosecuting the J6ers.

Among the long list of categories for which pardons (i.e., “categorical” pardons) should be issued are public statements by judges; sentencing disparities’ invalid charges’ withholding exculpatory evidence; prosecutorial misconduct; fabrication and spoilation of evidence; collective punishment-based prosecution; and invalid plea deals.

In page after page, it becomes apparent that the egregious political weaponization with which the public is now familiar is just the tip of the proverbial iceberg.

Careful Consideration

But this is no blanket proposal; it stipulates where further legal analysis is needed:

This Pardon of course has nothing to do with the completely different topic of the very few individual defendants who battled with police… I am aware of allegations of a few people who violently brawled with law enforcement officers although I am also aware that when video is shown in complete context some – though not all – of those people were often peaceful until attacked unprovoked.

None of us know every detail of every J6 case, nor the source of provocation for every person at the Capitol that day. On the other hand, one may argue that it doesn’t matter because there would have been no violence were it not for the embedded federal provocateurs, and therefore, any person who actually committed any violence should be pardoned. There are notable arguments on both sides of this fine line.

Nonetheless, the many categories (and thus the vast majority) of all J6 cases are clearly candidates for pardons followed by restitution — post haste.

Lincoln Would Shudder

It’s surreal to realize that our nation has reached a point so low that we actually need to call for presidential pardons of Americans who were targeted like Soviet dissidents in the 1950s. It is astonishing to consider that we allowed ourselves to be governed by people who equate trespassing with treason.

In January 1838, a young Abraham Lincoln gave the famous “Lyceum Address,” in which he warned that liberty can only withstand mob rule or tyranny if we perpetuate the love of freedom as ordered by the Constitution, and abide by the rule of law.

Lincoln would surely shudder if he knew that we did not heed his warning about the emergence of a “mobocratic spirit” — that all we could muster was low grumbling when our glorious leaders vilified the Founders and cast aspersions on the very concept of American freedom, or that in our hubris we dismissed his admonitions to intentionally cultivate the American spirit so as to withstand inevitable fading brought on by “the silent artillery of time.”

Let us pray that Donald Trump and his team embrace with urgency presidential pardons for those who were at the receiving end of what will surely go down in history as a Soviet-like political operation.

And while we take on the easy role of calling for the Trump administration to fumigate the spores of socialism still infesting Washington, D.C., let us not turn away from the less desirable task of remembering that over the last several decades we have allowed the comforts of modern American life to overtake and fade our collective and personal responsibility to perpetuate freedom.

May God forgive and restore us.

Joachim Osther is a freelance writer focusing on the intersection of culture and Christianity. He holds a master’s degree in theological studies from Veritas College and Seminary, and two degrees in the life sciences, a field in which he works as a strategist, advisor, and published author. He is also an occasional contributor to RaymondIbrahim.com, chronicling the relevance of historical clashes between militant Islam and the West.