"The pardon proclamation saved them, opening prison doors and ending all of the criminal prosecutions related to the Capitol attack. Even more, it gave a presidential stamp of approval to their inverted vision of Jan. 6, 2021: that those who assaulted the police and vandalized the historic building that day were victims, and those who spent the next four years using the criminal justice system to hold them accountable were villains."
"But nearly a year after Trump's sweeping proclamation asserted that he had cleared the way for "a process of national reconciliation," many recipients of his clemency remain consumed by conspiracy theories, angry at the Trump administration for not validating their insistence that the Capitol attack was a deep-state setup and haunted by problems from both before and after the riot."
President Donald Trump granted clemency to nearly 1,600 people implicated in the Jan. 6 Capitol attack early in his second administration. The pardons opened prison doors and ended criminal prosecutions related to the riot. The clemency effectively affirmed a view of the attack that cast rioters as victims and prosecutors as villains. Many recipients of the pardons remain consumed by conspiracy theories, resentful that the administration did not endorse claims of a deep-state setup, and continue to struggle with problems from before and after the riot. Investigators found no new facts to contradict that rioters acted on false beliefs pushed by Trump and that the attack injured about 140 officers and threatened the peaceful transfer of presidential power.
Read at Boston.com
Unable to calculate read time
Collection
[
|
...
]