Americans don't support pardons for jailed January 6 insurrectionists. However, on the fourth anniversary of Trump's mob storming Congress, they seem inevitable. And that is likely just going to be the beginning of a perversion of justice the likes of which the country has not seen in a very long time.
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Four years after Donald Trump sicced a mob of some of his most rabid supporters on the Capitol in a last-ditch effort to deny Joe Biden’s 2020 election victory, it seems mundane that his own certification on Monday may be delayed by a bit of snow.
The fact that it is going to happen at all is a national embarrassment.
When the country watched in horror how the MAGA rabble stormed Congress on Trump’s behalf, it seemed unlikely that the American people would ever elect him to anything again, let alone the presidency.
Yet here we are.
And what is just as disturbing is that there seems to be little doubt that, not long after taking office in two weeks, he will pardon most (if not all) of the hundreds of people who were convicted for attacking the Capitol, police officers, and democracy.
Like Trump, they are convicted criminals, but the president-elect refers to them as “patriots.”
Pardoning them is unpopular.
Only slightly more than one-third of Americans would approve of such a move, which is still stunningly high. It’s as though they have forgotten the images from that day, the call to hang Trump’s own vice president, and lawmakers from both parties running and hiding from a horde of election-denying lunatics.
Anybody who does remember should be offended that they will be let off the hook… especially because it sends a terrible message: Commit crimes on my behalf, and I will make sure you don’t pay the price.
Obviously, while that will be the real reason for the pardons, Trump will have to concoct an official justification for why he will overturn all of those jury verdicts and guilty pleas.
And that is likely going to be a claim that will sound familiar to anybody who has followed the incoming president’s attempts to escape accountability for crimes he himself has committed: It was all just the work of a weaponized justice system.
But that also means that it won’t stop with these pardons.
Because if you buy into this narrative, as Trump and his supporters clearly do, then “justice” doesn’t just mean springing the insurrectionists from prison; it also means going after the people who put them there.
The incoming president has claimed before that revenge is not on his mind. In the case of the January 6 prisoners, that might be the case because he doesn’t care about them.
However, when it comes to the person most dear to Trump, which is himself, such a vendetta seems likely.
Just this weekend, he launched into a couple of unhinged tirades directed at his “enemies.” It should be noted that this is exactly the kind of rhetoric Supreme Court Chief Justice John Roberts warned against last week when he outlined threats against the judiciary.
Ranting and raving like a lunatic, he used the words “illegal” multiple times. And, of course, if there was illegal behavior that targeted the boss, a champion of justice loyal sycophant like Kash Patel, whom Trump tapped to head the FBI, knows just what to do.
Most Republicans, even those who bought the Big Lie, would probably like January 6 to go away since it is a stain on all of them. But that is wishful thinking because Trump himself will never let any of this go… and he is about to show the country what a weaponized justice system really looks like.
In his Navigating the Insanity columns, Klaus Marre provides the kind of hard-hitting, thought-provoking, and often humorous analysis you won’t find anywhere else.
