Trump pardons more than 1,500 defendants for the assault on the Capitol and commutes the most serious sentences | International

It was one of the first measures adopted by Donald Trump after taking possession of the Oval Office for the second time hours after taking the oath of office in Washington. The new president of the United States signed an executive order this Monday pardoning some 1,500 people convicted or prosecuted for participating in the assault on the Capitol on January 6, 2021. He also commuted the sentences of 14 inmates in prison for the most serious crimes. committed that day, one of the darkest days in the recent history of democracy in the United States.

It is a “total, complete and unconditional” pardon, Trump said, which “puts an end,” he added, “to a grave national injustice perpetrated against the American people over the past four years.” The new president referred to those pardoned as “hostages” and stated that he hoped the prisoners would be released that same night.”

The news was not a surprise to anyone; Trump had been warning for months that he would do so as soon as he took office for the second time as president of the United States. During the campaign that returned him to the White House, he defined that dull January day in the capital as an “act of peace and love.”

What actually happened can be summarized like this: thousands of his followers marched towards Congress at the end of a rally by the still president in which he incited the masses to insurrection. They forcibly stormed the Capitol and desecrated the institution in every possible way in an attack that lasted several hours, while Trump, who had planted the hoax in their heads that the elections had been stolen from him, followed it all on television. The riot caused the death of a protester and left four others dead in the hours following the incident, in addition to injuries to around 140 agents who were protecting the ceremony of the peaceful transfer of presidential power.

Fifty activists from the community that has formed in recent years in defense of the insurrectionists passed on Monday to the door of a prison in southeastern Washington where three dozen of those inmates are serving their sentences. They expected the news that Trump had pardoned them, but not the generosity shown by the president, who released such famous and controversial figures from January 6 as the leader of the extremist militia of the Proud Boys, Enrique Tarrio, whom He received 22 years for seditious conspiracy, or the leader of another fearsome ultra group, the Oath Keepers. Stewart Rhodes, who has been behind bars for a couple of years and had another 16 left, is one of the 14 whose sentence was commuted, considered completed.

At the end of a day in which there were no more surprises in Washington, the crowd, dressed in red caps and equipped with American flags, stood at 10 degrees below zero in front of the door of the correctional facility and did what each person usually does. night: listen to patriotic music and talk to the press and some of those on the other side of the walls. In one corner were Daniel Ball’s parents, who had driven 14 hours from Florida with a hope that was fulfilled when Sherri Hafner, who has made a name in the January 6 prisoner community for broadcasting these vigils, said through the megaphone that the 38-year-old boy was ready, according to his lawyer, to leave prison.

Calls behind bars

The father began to cry. Previously, he had explained that his son, three years after he was arrested, had not yet been tried, “because he refused to plead guilty.” Before the pardon, he was charged with 12 charges, including assaulting, resisting or impeding officers with a deadly or dangerous weapon and using an explosive to commit a serious crime. He faced a maximum sentence of more than 20 years. “Dad, mom, I love you so much,” he said from inside the prison, while a woman, arriving from Central Virginia for the first time at the vigil, also began to cry.

“Trump said he would do it, that he would free us, and he has kept his promise; He is a man of his word. How proud to have such a brave president!” Dominic Box, who a judge found guilty of five crimes, said in another call. When they hung up the phone so as not to take up the line, lest lawyers call with more good news, Brandon Fellows, another regular at the vigils, said that he had served three years of his sentence and that the conditions in the prison on the other side of the streets were “inhuman.”

Afterwards, they listened to that classic that Kris Kristoferson wrote and that, in the voice of Janis Joplin, warns that “freedom is just another way of saying that you have nothing to lose,” before a guy arrived with a megaphone as a toy to provoke those present. “Is antifa“!” shouted a bearded man. Total: the police had to come and get the troublemaker out of there. At nine o’clock, like every night for almost a thousand, everyone, inside and out, sang the American anthem.

This Monday’s pardons put an end to the macro case of January 6, the “most important that the Department of Justice has embarked on in its history,” as described by the recently dismissed Attorney General Merrick Garland. The hundreds of people arrested and accused of federal crimes ended up before a Washington court that for the last four years was stuck in resolving these processes. About thirty of the condemned ended up in the same module of this prison overlooking the Anacostia River, in a wing that they baptized as “freedom.”

After having signed the pardons, among dozens of other extraordinary measures, Trump left the White House at the end of the first day of his return to power to head to the three inaugural galas he attended. At that time there were still a couple dozen people at the prison doors. They clapped their hands and kicked the ground to withstand the cold, while they waited for one of the prisoners to be released, they handed out posters asking that “no man” be left behind and one of the prisoners on the phone said: “Thank you very much, Mr. President, to the “We will finally return home.”