Trump Has No Intention Of Backing Law Or Order— And The GOP’s Just Fine With That

Yesterday, Rolling Stone’s Nikki Ramirez introduced their readers to the violent J-6 criminals Trump set free on his first day in office. In his inaugural address on Monday he had declared “that his second presidency would restore fair, equal, and impartial justice under the constitutional rule of law.’ Hours later, the president issued a blanket pardon and widespread clemency to 1,500 individuals who participated in the Jan. 6 attack on the Capitol— including offenders convicted of violent crimes. Over the course of their campaign and presidential transition, Trump and Vice President J.D. Vance, danced around committing to pardoning all Jan. 6 defendants— particularly the large swath convicted of assaulting police and law enforcement officers, planned violence against lawmakers, and maiming the Capitol in their frenzy to usurp the 2020 election. ‘If you beat up a cop, of course, you deserve to go to prison. If you violated the law, you should suffer the consequences,’ Vance said in May. 

Señor T must have had permission from Musk that he agrees: “If you beat up a cop,” wrote Ramirez, “if you violated the law in the name of Donald J. Trump, you can receive a blank slate and escape the consequences— no matter how egregious your actions.” One monsters Trump released back onto the streets was career criminal David Dempsey who had been sentenced to 20 years, “one of the longest sentences given to a Jan. 6 defendant. According to prosecutors, Dempsey ‘viciously assaulted and injured police officers defending the Lower West Terrace Tunnel with a variety of implements fashioned as weapons,’ for over an hour the day of the attack. ‘Dempsey climbed atop his fellow rioters, using them like human scaffolding, thrusting himself to the front. Once he reached the mouth of the tunnel, Dempsey began a prolonged attack, fighting with his hands, feet, flag poles, crutches, pepper spray, broken pieces of furniture, and anything else he could get his hands on, as weapons against the police. Dempsey’s violence reached such extremes that, at one point, he attacked a fellow rioter who was trying to disarm him,’ prosecutors said. 

Another was Daniel “DJ” Rodriguez who tasered Police Officer Michael Fanone, who was “dragged from a line of police officers into the heart of the mob, where rioters beat him and attempted to take his service weapon. Fanone was shocked multiple times in the neck by a taser wielded by Rodriguez, and suffered a heart attack at some point during the day, a concussion, traumatic brain injury, and was later diagnosed with PTSD. Rodriguez was sentenced to over 12 years in prison for his assault against Fanone.” 

Patrick McCaughey III  dangerous predator is out on the streets again. Judge Trevor McFadden described him as the “poster child of all that was dangerous and appalling about” Jan. 6, and accused him of perpetrating “some of the most egregious crimes that were committed that day.” He was sentenced to over 7 years for “assaulting police in their bid to force their way into the Capitol. As McCaughey and other attackers attempted to force their way through a line of cops with riot shields, he used a stolen shield to push MPD Officer Daniel Hodges against a metal door frame while another assailant hit him in the face with a stolen baton.”

More? Peter Francis Stager, a truck driver from Arkansas, was sentenced to four years and four months in prison after pleading guilty to assaulting an officer with a deadly or dangerous weapon— in this case a flagpole. “‘Stager himself wielded a flagpole and used it to strike at a vulnerable officer, who, lying face down in a mob of rioters, had no means of defending himself,’ prosecutors wrote of the assault that took place near the Lower West tunnel entrance to the Capitol, a site where the fighting between police and the mob of rioters reached a fever pitch. ‘Every single one of those Capitol law enforcement officers, death is the remedy. That is the only remedy they get,’ Stager declared on film the day of the riot.”

Julian Khater and George Tanios killed Capitol Police Officer Bian Sicknick and Trump put them out on the streets too. I’m surprise the Washington Post allowed it but Aaron Blake reported that no one really knew “how far [Trump] would be willing to go in his second term. Trump has never been afraid of extremism. But it is fair to wager that his second term will be significantly more untethered from norms. Gone are the concerns about seeking reelection. Severely diminished are the numbers of non-MAGA Republicans in his administration and in Congress, relative to his first term. And the past eight years have gradually beaten the will out of the Republicans who might dare to stand in his way. In his first day back in office on Monday, Trump sent a massive signal about just how untethered he will be: He gave clemency to everyone involved in the Jan. 6 attack on the Capitol mounted on his behalf.”

Blake noted that “All the available data suggests his pardons are probably a very unpopular move… [R]ecent polling showed Americans opposed the broad idea of Jan. 6 pardons by between 18 and 35 points… [A recent poll] showed just 14 percent of Americans ‘strongly’ supported such pardons, while 47 percent strongly opposed them. And that’s before you even get to the concept of pardoning those convicted of assaulting police— a more obviously fraught concept… [A] YouGov poll last week showed about three-quarters of Americans opposed both pardoning those convicted of assaulting police and those convicted of using a deadly weapon. Those numbers were about 20 points higher than they were for the broader concept of Jan. 6 pardons.

That Trump would take such action on his first day back in office is surely a signal of his willingness to go to drastic places in the weeks, months and years to come.

Presidents have broad pardon power, but it’s generally constrained by political concerns and norms…

It’s not just that such a blanket pardon is unpopular and fraught; it’s also the message it sends to his supporters.

Regardless of the merits of any individual pardon, the breadth of Trump’s Jan. 6 pardons and the fact that they were not at all targeted cannot help but send a message that he will do what he can to protect those who rise up— and even assault police officers— in his defense.

It’s easy to see how certain supporters might take that as license to go to drastic lengths to support Trump. We already saw, in the Jan. 6 cases themselves, how many of Trump’s more extreme supporters were happy to read between the lines of his words and actions and viewed them as a call to action.

And then there’s what it says to those who might cast doubt on Trump’s intent.

As Robert Jimison reported yesterday, don’t look for them too hard in the ranks of congressional Republicans. He wrote that “A small contingent of Republicans in Congress on Tuesday criticized Trump’s pardons of more than 1,500 people charged for their actions during the Jan. 6, 2021, attack on the Capitol, including rioters who violently attacked police. ‘I just can’t agree,’ Senator Thom Tillis, Republican of North Carolina, told reporters on Capitol Hill early Tuesday, adding that he would propose new legislation to tighten penalties for violent actions against law enforcement officers. ‘I’m about to file two bills that will increase the penalties, up to and including the death penalty, for the murder of a police officer and increasing the penalties and creating federal crimes for assaulting a police officer,’ Tillis told a crowd of reporters gathered outside his office. Members of Congress ran in fear of their lives from the Capitol four years ago as it was besieged by a pro-Trump mob, and many Republicans made strong statements in the immediate aftermath of the attack that violent rioters must be prosecuted to the fullest extent of the law. But on Tuesday, few spoke up to object to Trump’s pardons, and many Republican lawmakers said it was time to move on.”

There were a few who were mildly critical of the mass pardons: Susan Collins (ME), Kevin Cramer (ND), Katie Britt (AL), Mitch McConnell (KY). But when I wrote “mildly,” I wasn’t exaggerating. The pardons, though, were blasted by the big police unions that helped elect Trump, the Fraternal Order of Police and the International Association of Chiefs of Police. Joint statement: “Allowing those convicted of these crimes to be released early diminishes accountability and devalues the sacrifices made by courageous law enforcement officers and their families… When perpetrators of crimes, especially serious crimes, are not held fully accountable, it sends a dangerous message that the consequences for attacking law enforcement are not severe, potentially emboldening others to commit similar acts of violence.”

Many of the 150 officers violently attacked by the inmates Trump released “described themselves,” according to Luke Broadwater, “as struggling and depressed in response to Trump freeing their attackers.” Meanwhile, “Trump,” according to NPR, fulfilled a campaign promise to Libertarian supporters on his second day back in office by pardoning the former creator and owner of an underground e-commerce website known for drug trafficking. Ross Ulbricht, also known as ‘Dread Pirate Roberts,’ operated the anonymous digital marketplace known as Silk Road between 2011 and 2013, when law enforcement shut the site down and arrested him at a California public library… He was convicted of distributing narcotics, engaging in a continuing criminal enterprise, conspiring to commit computer hacking, and conspiring to create fake identities and launder money. He was sentenced to life in prison.”

In an indictment, U.S. Attorney Preet Bharara described Silk Road as a meeting place for criminals hoping to “buy and sell illegal drugs and other illicit goods and services anonymously and outside the reach of law enforcement.”

He also described it as “the most sophisticated and extensive criminal marketplace on the internet” at the time. He alleged Ulbricht made tens of millions of dollars through the site. Law enforcement went to great lengths to investigate and apprehend Ulbricht and his supporters, including by infiltrating the site and seizing a server in Iceland.

While Georgia crackpot tweeted that he wants to put Rev. Mariann Budde on a deportation list (deport her to New Jersey where she was born?) because of her truth-to-power sermon directed at an infuriated Trump, there were some more mild rebukes of the prions from several Republicans— Sen. Jerry Moran (KS), Sen. Bill Cassidy (LA), Mike Rounds (SD) and Sen. Lisa Murkowski (AK).