Trump Freed January 6 Leaders Serving 18 and 22 Years, Then Pardoned the Fake-Elector Effort

Eighteen Years and Twenty-Two Years, Cut Short

On January 20, 2025, his first day back in office, President Donald Trump ordered freedom for two men whom juries had convicted of conspiring to stop the transfer of presidential power by force; Reuters reported their release the next day.¹²³⁴ He commuted the eighteen-year sentence of Oath Keepers founder Stewart Rhodes and pardoned Proud Boys chairman Enrique Tarrio, who had received twenty-two years.¹²³ Trump used the presidency he regained to remove the remaining prison punishment for men convicted of attacking the transfer of that office.¹²³

In November 2025 he pardoned the fake-elector effort that the House January 6 committee found he had overseen, and expressly excluded himself.⁵⁶ Trump signed both proclamations.¹⁵ The charge is that he used a public power to shelter participants in the assault on democratic succession.¹⁵

Attorney General Merrick Garland said 140 law enforcement officers defending the Capitol were assaulted, and Trump's clemency covered convictions arising from those assaults as well as the leaders' conspiracy convictions.³¹

Juries convicted Rhodes and Tarrio of seditious conspiracy in separate trials.²³ In May 2023, U.S. Attorney Matthew M. Graves said the January 6 prosecutions had produced more seditious-conspiracy convictions than any criminal event since the statute was enacted during the Civil War.² At Tarrio's sentencing, U.S. District Judge Timothy J. Kelly found that his conduct constituted an official act of terrorism and applied a sentencing enhancement.³ Tarrio had monitored the attack from afar and privately claimed credit in a message to Proud Boys leaders.³

DOJ press release, "Proud Boys Leader Sentenced to 22 Years in Prison for Seditious Conspiracy and Other Charges"³

Make no mistake . . . we did this.

Four Proud Boys co-defendants had received eighteen years (Ethan Nordean), seventeen (Joseph Biggs), fifteen (Zachary Rehl) and ten (Dominic Pezzola).³ Trump commuted all four sentences to time served.¹ A commutation reduces punishment without changing the fact of conviction, so Rhodes's conviction stayed in place in January 2025.⁷⁸

Fourteen Commutations and a Blanket Pardon

The proclamation named fourteen people for commutations, including Rhodes, then extended an unconditional pardon to every other person convicted of an offense related to the events at or near the Capitol on January 6.¹ It drew no exception for violence against police.¹

Presidential Proclamation, "Granting Pardons and Commutation of Sentences for Certain Offenses Relating to the Events at or Near the United States Capitol on January 6, 2021"¹

grant a full, complete and unconditional pardon to all other individuals convicted of offenses related to events that occurred at or near the United States Capitol on January 6, 2021

Trump ordered the immediate release of convicted January 6 defendants still in prison and directed the Attorney General to pursue dismissal with prejudice of all pending indictments, a permanent bar to refiling them.¹ The proclamation gave no count; the Democratic staff of the House Judiciary Committee later described the blanket pardon as covering roughly 1,500.¹⁹

The Reconciliation He Promised

Presidential Proclamation, "Granting Pardons and Commutation of Sentences for Certain Offenses Relating to the Events at or Near the United States Capitol on January 6, 2021"¹

This proclamation ends a grave national injustice that has been perpetrated upon the American people over the last four years and begins a process of national reconciliation

Trump got the releases his order demanded.⁴ Reuters reported on January 21, 2025, that hundreds of January 6 prisoners had been released, including Rhodes and Tarrio; the Bureau of Prisons counted 211 releases from federal facilities.⁴ Vice President JD Vance and Trump's attorney general choice, Pam Bondi, had previously said they believed people who committed violence would not receive pardons, the same report said.⁴

The Fraternal Order of Police, which had endorsed Trump in 2024, criticized the pardons alongside the International Association of Chiefs of Police, Reuters reported.⁴ In an Ipsos survey conducted January 24–26, 2025, 62% opposed pardoning January 6 participants and 34% supported it.¹⁰ The poll measured support for the pardons, not whether the country was becoming more reconciled.¹⁰

DOJ Had Twelve Defendants' Convictions Set Aside

In 2026 the administration obtained more than release from prison.¹¹⁷ At the Justice Department's request, which cited Trump's January 20 proclamation, the appeals court set aside the convictions of Nordean, Biggs, Rehl and Pezzola.¹¹ On July 10, Judge Kelly granted the government's request to dismiss the Proud Boys case with prejudice.¹¹ Kelly said Trump's proclamation required dismissal once the appeals court had vacated the convictions, leaving the indictment pending again.¹¹ On August 4, Judge Amit Mehta dismissed the Oath Keepers indictment after the government obtained removal of eight defendants' convictions, including Rhodes's.⁷ Mehta noted that two cooperating defendants, Joshua James and Brian Ulrich, still had seditious-conspiracy convictions: DOJ had not explained why their convictions remained while those of the eight trial defendants were cleared.⁷

DOJ won the dismissals because the courts deferred to executive decisions about prosecution, and both judges expressly disagreed with the decision to abandon the cases.¹¹⁷ "This court does strongly disagree," Mehta wrote.⁷

The Proud Boys' obstruction-related convictions were unlikely to survive appeal, Kelly said, after the Supreme Court narrowed the statute in Fischer v. United States in 2024.¹¹ Their other convictions included seditious conspiracy for Nordean, Biggs and Rehl, and assault and robbery for Pezzola.¹¹

Mehta said DOJ had not claimed insufficient evidence, prosecutorial misconduct or a violation of defendants' rights.⁷ Apart from a possible issue with obstruction counts, it had identified no legal error or grave injustice for dismissal to correct, he wrote.⁷ Trump had chosen commutations rather than pardons for these defendants, and DOJ had not said he authorized relief beyond those commutations, Mehta noted.⁷

In May 2026, DOJ also removed public accounts of January 6 guilty pleas, verdicts and sentences, calling them partisan propaganda; NPR documented deletions covering Daniel Rodriguez, Thomas Webster and Peter Schwartz, whose cases involved assaults on police.¹²¹³

The Scheme Was His

The House January 6 committee found that Trump and his allies prepared fake elector slates in seven states he lost.⁶ "President Trump oversaw it himself," its report said.⁶ The objective, the report said, was to persuade Vice President Mike Pence to disregard legitimate electoral votes for Joe Biden in favor of the competing Trump slates.⁶

The report recorded two limits: Pennsylvania and New Mexico's documents contained conditions, and some participants did not know exactly what they were being asked to do.⁶ Neither made the slates legitimate; the committee found that officials in all seven states had already certified Biden's victory and that no court had reversed those results.⁶

Trump's own senior campaign lawyers reduced their involvement after the Supreme Court rejected Texas's election challenge on December 11, 2020, according to the committee.⁶ His campaign general counsel, Matthew Morgan, told investigators that electors lacking a state certificate of ascertainment were not valid.⁶

John Eastman, whom Trump later pardoned by name, defended the electoral-count plan as a good-faith interpretation of the Constitution.¹⁴⁵ In a March 28, 2022 civil dispute over his emails, U.S. District Judge David Carter rejected that defense and found it more likely than not that Trump and Eastman dishonestly conspired to obstruct the joint session of Congress.¹⁴

The August 2023 federal indictment alleged that fraudulent electors cast ballots for Trump at his direction and that of a co-conspirator.¹⁵ No jury heard that case: the district court dismissed it without prejudice on November 25, 2024, after his reelection, under the Justice Department's policy against prosecuting a sitting president.¹⁶

A Pardon for Everyone Except Trump

On November 7, 2025, Trump pardoned all United States citizens for a broad category of conduct relating to 2020 presidential electors, whether or not a state had recognized the slates.⁵ It named Rudolph Giuliani, John Eastman and Mark Meadows, whom the House report had identified as participants in the fake-elector effort, and said the grant was not limited to the listed names.⁵⁶

Proclamation 10989, "Granting Pardons for Certain Offenses Related to the 2020 Presidential Election" (Federal Register, 90 FR 51071)⁵

I, DONALD J. TRUMP, do hereby grant a full, complete, and unconditional pardon to all United States citizens for conduct relating to the advice, creation, organization, execution, submission, support, voting, activities, participation in, or advocacy for or of any slate or proposed slate of Presidential electors, whether or not recognized by any State or State official, in connection with the 2020 Presidential Election, as well for any conduct relating to their efforts to expose voting fraud and vulnerabilities in the 2020 Presidential Election.

Trump wrote one exception into the grant.⁵

Proclamation 10989, "Granting Pardons for Certain Offenses Related to the 2020 Presidential Election" (Federal Register, 90 FR 51071)⁵

This pardon does not apply to the President of the United States, Donald J. Trump.

Trump thus extended federal clemency to participants in an effort the House committee found he had overseen, while excluding himself.⁵⁶ The grant did not erase state crimes: the Constitution limits presidential pardons to federal offenses.¹⁷

Tina Peters: The Pardon Failed in State Court

Tina Peters tested that limit.¹⁸ The Justice Department lists a December 5, 2025 pardon for Peters covering election-related conduct in 2020 and 2021.¹⁹ She had been convicted in Colorado of seven offenses arising from a scheme to allow unauthorized access to Mesa County's voting system.¹⁸

On April 2, 2026, the Colorado Court of Appeals held that Trump's pardon did not reach her state offenses and upheld her convictions.¹⁸ Peters won on a different issue: the court reversed her sentence because the trial judge had improperly considered her protected speech and ordered resentencing.¹⁸

Peters left state prison on June 1 after Governor Jared Polis commuted her sentence on May 15, the Associated Press reported.²⁰ Polis said the sentence was unusually harsh for a first-time nonviolent offender and raised First Amendment concerns.²⁰ The AP also reported that Trump had successfully pressured Polis into commuting it.²⁰

Punishment and Restitution

The House Judiciary Committee's Democratic staff said that January 6 defendants had paid only 15% of the $3 million they owed in restitution when Trump pardoned them, and that the pardons erased the remaining $2.6 million.⁹ By that accounting, the people pardoned kept money they had been ordered to pay for the harm they caused.⁹

Money already collected was at stake too: the staff's June 17, 2025 memo said DOJ was arguing to refund $437,000 in January 6 restitution.²¹ On August 27, 2025, Judge John D. Bates ruled that Yvonne St Cyr was entitled to a $2,270 refund after her conviction was set aside: $2,000 in restitution and a $270 assessment.²² Other district judges had denied similar requests, and Bates stayed his judgment pending appeals in those cases.²²

Across clemency recipients, Democratic staff estimated financial relief at about $1.3 billion in June 2025 and nearly $1.7 billion on August 21, 2026.²¹²³ Neither total is a verified sum of unpaid victim losses: both include forfeitures and prosecutors' requests before sentencing, June staff did not know how much had already been paid, and the August appendix counted Joseph Lewis's already-paid penalties and the full $3 million in January 6 restitution.²¹²⁴ Staff also warned of reduced funding for Victims of Crime Act programs serving survivors of domestic violence, sexual assault, trafficking and child abuse.⁹

Forgiving a prison term and forgiving money owed to victims impose different costs.⁹ The staff memo identified a way to do the first without the second: a conditional pardon requiring full restitution before the recipient received all its benefits.²¹ The staff also cited Justice Department evaluation standards calling for applicants to accept responsibility and make restitution; the department says those guidelines are advisory and do not restrict the President's constitutional power.⁹⁸

Mercy Was Available; Blanket Clemency Was a Choice

Trump had granted mercy one case at a time.²⁵ He commuted Alice Marie Johnson's sentence in 2018 and pardoned her in 2020, after she spent more than twenty years in prison for a first-time nonviolent drug offense.²⁵ NPR reported that he appointed her pardon czar to recommend presidential commutations, and that she described community safety and support for people returning from prison as priorities.²⁵

The January 6 grant took the other course: blanket and unconditional, with no exception for assaulting police.¹

Lawfare's June 4, 2026 study identified at least 97 recipients arrested, charged or convicted in unrelated cases since January 6, 2021, including five whose subsequent crimes or alleged crimes occurred while they would otherwise still have been imprisoned or detained.²⁶ That total includes cases before the pardons and is not a count of new convictions after release.²⁶

WRIC reported that Zachary Alam received a seven-year active prison term on May 7, 2026 for burglary committed after his pardon.²⁷ WVIA reported that Jake Lang pleaded guilty in July to threatening a Washington police commander at the January 6 fifth-anniversary gathering; his 180-day sentence was suspended.²⁸ Erie County prosecutors said Thomas Sibick pleaded guilty on September 2 to felony weapons possession and misdemeanor criminal mischief after a June domestic incident; sentencing was scheduled for November 17.²⁹ Buffalo Toronto Public Media reported that Trump had pardoned him in 2025.³⁰ KLTV reported Ryan Nichols's May 10 arrest for deadly conduct after an alleged church-parking-lot gun threat; Nichols denies threatening the couple with a gun.³¹³²²⁶ FOX 4 reported Lang's June terroristic-threat charge for allegedly threatening to shoot Karmelo Anthony, followed by release on $250,000 bond and an order to leave Texas except for court appearances and attorney meetings.³³ KRIS 6 reported Peter Schwartz's September 9 arrest on federal gun charges following an alleged July 14 armed confrontation in Corpus Christi.³⁴

The Strongest Defense

The White House defended the pardons as fulfillment of Trump's campaign promise and claimed, without evidence by Reuters's account, that many convictions were politically motivated.⁴ Kelly noted that the Proud Boys prosecution began while Trump was still president.¹¹ Trump's own Justice Department, asking Mehta to dismiss the Oath Keepers case, claimed no prosecutorial misconduct.⁷ The cases produced more than 1,000 guilty pleas, Reuters reported, and separate juries convicted Rhodes and Tarrio of seditious conspiracy.⁴²³

Trump's strongest legal defense is constitutional: Article II gives the President broad authority to pardon federal offenses.¹⁷ Congress cannot reduce that power by statute, the Supreme Court held in Schick v. Reed in 1974.³⁵

Schick v. Reed, 419 U.S. 256 (opinion)³⁵

the power flows from the Constitution alone, not from any legislative enactments, and that it cannot be modified, abridged, or diminished by the Congress.

Alexander Hamilton supplied the humanitarian case in Federalist No. 74: an accessible pardon power can temper excessive punishment, and a timely pardon to insurgents can restore public tranquility.³⁶ One officer, he argued, would feel responsibility more strongly and exercise mercy more humanely than a divided body.³⁶ Mercy after rebellion is part of the constitutional design he defended.³⁶

The power stops at impeachment: presidential pardons cannot undo it.¹⁷ In 1925, Chief Justice William Howard Taft identified impeachment as the remedy for a hypothetical president using repeated pardons to defeat court orders (Ex parte Grossman).³⁷ Broad authority and accountability for its abuse can coexist.³⁷

Why This Is an Impeachment Case

At Virginia's ratifying convention on June 18, 1788, George Mason warned about a president pardoning crimes he had advised.³⁸

Debates in the Virginia Ratifying Convention, June 18, 1788 (Elliot's Debates, vol. 3)³⁸

he may frequently pardon crimes which were advised by himself.

James Madison answered with impeachment.³⁸

Debates in the Virginia Ratifying Convention, June 18, 1788 (Elliot's Debates, vol. 3)³⁸

If the President be connected in any suspicious manner with any persons, and there be grounds to believe he will shelter himself; the House of Representatives can impeach him

Hamilton's Federalist No. 65 described impeachable offenses as abuses or violations of public trust.³⁹ The Constitution permits removal through impeachment and conviction for treason, bribery or other high crimes and misdemeanors.¹⁷

The two proclamations were not the whole of it.⁴⁰¹⁹ The Justice Department settled with Ashli Babbitt's family for nearly $5 million in May 2025, and the Air Force later approved military funeral honors for her, Stars and Stripes reported.⁴⁰ She was shot trying to climb through a broken window in a barricaded door leading to the Speaker's Lobby as members of Congress evacuated; DOJ cleared the officer of wrongdoing in 2021, the outlet reported.⁴⁰ Trump's other clemency grants covered clinic-access offenses, second-degree murder, cocaine-importation conspiracy, bribery and securities fraud.¹⁹

Trump used a public power to remove punishment for men convicted of attacking the transfer of presidential power, then extended federal clemency to an election effort the House committee found he had overseen, while excluding himself.¹²³⁵⁶ By the Democratic staff's accounting, the January 6 pardons erased $2.6 million in unpaid restitution, a cost to victims and taxpayers.⁹ That is the abuse of public trust this case asks the House to judge: a president sheltering participants in the assault on democratic succession and shifting the consequences of crime away from its perpetrators.¹⁵⁹³⁹