With Donald Trump winning back the White House, his Big Lie that Jan. 6 was just an enthusiastic rally that got out of hand, rather than an insurrectionist mob he unleashed to disrupt the count of the 2020 electoral college, has new currency.
A new congressional Republican report, spearheaded by MAGA lapdog Rep. Barry Loudermilk (R-Ga.) has recommended a criminal probe of former Rep. Liz Cheney (R-Wyo.) for co-chairing the House Jan. 6 investigation. Loudermilk’s report reached a through-the-looking-glass conclusion that Cheney & co. had promoted “a false, pre-determined narrative that President Trump was personally responsible for the breach of the Capitol on Jan. 6 and should therefore be held accountable.”
Trump is returning to the Oval Office with an explicit agenda to rewrite history — and upend convictions. He has vowed to issue “Day One” pardons to Jan. 6 criminals and defendants, whom he has called “great patriots,” “hostages,” and “warriors.” During the 2024 presidential campaign, Trump referred to Jan. 6 itself as “a day of love.” And when he recently summoned tech billionaire Mark Zuckerberg to Mar-a-Lago, Trump reportedly prompted his guests to rise and place their hands over their hearts, while listening to a rendition of the national anthem sung by jailed Jan. 6 defendants.
It is not precisely clear whom Trump wants to pardon. But the list of Jan. 6 convicts includes many serving long sentences for serious felonies — ranging from injuring police officers to sedition. In mid-December, a federal judge in Washington, D.C., who has handled many Jan. 6 criminal cases, spoke out from the bench. District Court Judge Amit Mehta said the idea that Trump could pardon the former head of the Oath Keepers militia haunts him: “The notion that Stewart Rhodes could be absolved is frightening — and ought to be frightening to anyone who cares about democracy,” Mehta said, per a courtroom report in Politico. In 2023, Mehta handed down an 18-year sentence to Rhodes for “seditious conspiracy.” (The prison term included a terrorism enhancement.)
Asked by Rolling Stone if Trump planned to pardon Rhodes — or others imprisoned on seditious conspiracy charges, like Enrique Tarrio, the ex-honcho of the Proud Boys — the presidential transition team didn’t rule it out. “President Trump will make pardon decisions on a case-by-case basis for those who were denied due process and unfairly targeted by the justice system,” says Trump transition spokesperson Karoline Leavitt.
In the buildup to Jan. 6 and in its aftermath, Rhodes spearheaded militia activity that that saw Oath Keepers lieutenants stockpile weapons across the border in Virginia, creating “Quick Reaction Forces” or QFCs, that could be activated in the hoped-for scenario that Trump would invoke the Insurrection Act and summon militia groups to battle his enemies to help him cling to power.
Rhodes was outside the Capitol during the rioting, but communicated with members in the building. When Rhodes received a report that members of Congress were in danger and looking to flee, he replied, per court documents, “Fuck ‘em.” At sentencing, Rhodes compared himself to the Soviet dissident Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn. Mehta told Rhodes to his face that he was no “political prisoner” — but rather an “ongoing threat and peril to this country.”
Rhodes and the Oath Keepers were tangentially linked to MAGA world — with Oath Keepers providing security for VIPs at “Stop the Steal” rallies. (The licit reason for militia members being on the ground on Jan. 6 was to beef up security at the Trump rally at the Ellipse.)
Trumpworld had a tighter relationship with the Proud Boys. The fighting club’s honcho Enrique Tarrio had been the Florida director for the grassroots group, Latinos for Trump. He was also an associate of Trump ally Roger Stone — and got his picture taken with MAGA luminaries including Donald Trump Jr., Sens. Ted Cruz and Rick Scott, and former Trump aide Sarah Huckabee Sanders, who’s now the governor of Arkansas. Trump infamously called on the fight club to “Stand back and stand by” during a September 2020 debate with Joe Biden, rather than denounce them.
Tarrio was sentenced to 22 years in prison in September 2023 — like Rhodes, on seditious conspiracy charges. Tarrio was not in Washington, D.C., for the violence of Jan. 6; he had a court order to stay out of town stemming from a previous arrest in the district. But Tarrio directed an elite Proud Boys faction called the “Ministry of Self Defense,” which “participated in every consequential breach” on Jan. 6, per court documents, including a Proud Boy deputy who smashed out the first window at the Capitol, providing a point of entry for rioters. During the violence, Tarrio posted on social media, “Don’t fucking leave.” After the violence died down, he crowed: “Make no mistake… we did this.”
Trump’s first pick for attorney general, the disgraced ex-congressman Matt Gaetz (R-Fla.), had called Tarrio’s sentence “Orwellian.” Trump’s current choice, former Florida Attorney General Pam Bondi, is more of a cipher on Jan. 6 sentences. However, Trump’s FBI director nominee Kash Patel has written that the notion that that Jan. 6 was an insurrection is “gaslighting at its finest” — insisting: “It was NOT a coup. It was NOT an assault by domestic terrorists on our democracy.”
Rhodes and Tarrio are not alone in being convicted for seditious conspiracy over Jan. 6. Their co-conspirators include many other Proud Boys and Oath Keepers deputies.
Trump’s own messaging on who in the Jan. 6 crowd merits his compassion has — in typical form — been all over the place. “If somebody was evil and bad, I would look at that differently,” he said in an April Time interview. But in comments at a 2023 CNN town hall, Trump said he would “look at” the sedition convictions for Proud Boys, in particular, signaling he was open to the idea they deserved clemency: “I will say in Washington, D.C., you cannot get a fair trial. You cannot.”
At a recent press conference, Trump was, once again, non-committal on the scope of his Jan. 6 pardons, but vowed that he’d move quickly once in office. He told reporters, simply, “You’ll find out.”
