President Trump on Monday night said he was pardoning about 1,500 of his supporters who have been charged in the Jan. 6, 2021, attack on the US. Capitol, using his sweeping clemency powers on his first day back in office to dismantle the largest investigation and prosecution in Justice Department history. The pardons were a campaign promise, part of Trump's yearslong campaign to rewrite the history of the riot that left more than 100 police officers injured and threatened the peaceful transfer of power. Yet the scope of the clemency still comes as a major blow to the Justice Department's effort to hold participants accountable, the AP reports.
"These are the hostages," Trump said as he signed executive orders in the Oval Office, per CNN. "Approximately 1,500 for a pardon—full pardon." Trump said he was also commuting the sentences of six defendants, though the White House did not immediately provide details. Trump had suggested in the past few weeks that he would consider the Jan. 6 defendants on a case-by-case basis. Roughly 1,000 of the riot defendants were charged with low-level offenses, per the New York Times, and another 600 or so were also charged with assaulting, resisting, or impeding law enforcement.
An attorney for a former Proud Boys leader convicted of seditious conspiracy in the attack told NBC News that his client was being processed for release Monday from a medium-security federal prison in Louisiana. Enrique Tarrio has been serving a 22-year sentence. Tarrio had said he asked Trump for a pardon. His lawyer said Monday he wasn't sure whether Tarrio had been pardoned or his sentence commuted; CNN reports that Trump is commuting the sentences of the top leaders of the Proud Boys and Oath Keepers. (More Trump inauguration stories.)
,
uBlock 
,
and
Ghostery 
)
