On his first day in office, President Donald Trump exercised his executive clemency powers and pardoned those accused of crimes surrounding the Jan. 6, 2021, protest at the U.S. Capitol four years ago.

When asked last month if he planned to pardon protesters, he told NBC’s “Meet the Press” he would, but with exceptions — “Those people have suffered long and hard. And there may be some exceptions to it. I have to look. But, you know, if somebody was radical, crazy,” Trump said.

That ended up not being the case.

In his executive order, rather than considering pardons on a case-by-case basis, Trump commuted the convictions of 14 protesters and granted blanket pardons to around 1,500 individuals convicted of lesser crimes related to riots at the Capitol on Jan. 6, 2021.

Until last week, the investigation and prosecution of those accused of crimes related to Jan. 6 was ongoing under then-President Joe Biden. The latest U.S. Department of Justice data shows protesters lodged 1,009 guilty pleas, to 327 felonies and 627 misdemeanors. In total, nearly 1,583 people were criminally charged in federal court.

Supporters of President Donald Trump rally at the U.S. Capitol on Jan. 6, 2021, in Washington. As a winter storm bore down on the nation's capital four years later, lawmakers would again gather at the U.S. Capitol, this time without protests, challenges or violence — but behind layers of black security fencing serving — to certify Trump's 2024 win over Vice President Kamala Harris. | Jose Luis Magana

Nineteen of them were Utahns.

Trump’s sweeping pardon sparked a wave of divided reactions across the U.S. as it effectively brought an end to the Department of Justice’s largest criminal investigation in American history.

Legal experts question pardons, highlight clemency misuse

Utah attorney Greg Skordas, who represented a Utahn facing criminal charges, didn’t agree with the blanket pardon but said he was “pleased” for his client.

“I thought that the Jan. 6 insurrection was really one of the worst things that’s happened in our country in my lifetime,” he said, adding that many of the protesters were young — including his client — and were taken advantage of by others who “didn’t do much themselves except send the kids in.”

“I’m very pleased for the young people who got involved with this for all of the wrong reasons. They were all duped by a soulless leader who completely used them for his own selfish gain,” Skordas told the Deseret News.

“People were caught up in the emotion of it” and believed Biden’s win against Trump in the 2020 election was rigged. “They needed to do something about it, even though, looking back, a lot of them realize how badly they were duped” and can’t believe they did it, Skordas said.

The leaders of far-right groups, including Oath Keepers founder Stewart Rhodes and former Proud Boys chairman Enrique Tarrio, along with more than a dozen of their followers, were accused of seditious conspiracy, among other charges, in 2023 and were serving their time in prison before their sentences were commuted by Trump. Neither Rhodes or Tarrio apparently ever entered the U.S. Capitol.

Were Jan. 6 prosecutions fair?

Brett Tolman, Former U.S. attorney for the district of Utah, also represented a Utahn convicted of crimes in connection with Jan 6. He said there were many plot holes in the DOJ’s entire criminal investigation, including unfair prosecution by district attorneys and sentencing by judges.

“There were a tremendous number of abuses that were committed by the Department of Justice against their own policies in prosecuting these kinds of cases,” he said. “This was done because they wanted the narrative that this was a massive insurrection, because they felt like they could tag their political opponent with that and then push forward.”

The broader issue, Tolman said, is the misuse of presidential power in terms of clemency and pardons, calling out Biden’s last minute pardons — including for his son Hunter Biden — during his last days in office. Biden broke the one term presidential record for most pardons and sentence commutations, at an estimated 4,200 pardons, per Axios.

“I’ll call it out on both sides I don’t like the way it has been for multiple presidents,” he added. A presidential pardon should be “exclusively based on the merits of the case, or the efforts of the individual to show genuine and real rehabilitation. Those are the standards that are supposed to apply. And until we fix the clemency problem, what you’re going to see is presidents continually struggling to apply that constitutional power, which is incredibly broad.”

Protesters’ reactions to Trump pardons

Pamela Hemphill, dubbed “MAGA Granny” turned “EX-MAGA Granny” according to her social media, is a protester who has since publicly renounced her support for Trump and refuses to accept his pardon for the crimes she was accused of surrounding Jan. 6.

Rioters storm the West Front of the U.S. Capitol, Jan. 6, 2021, in Washington. | John Minchillo

Having pleaded guilty to a misdemeanor charge and already served her 60-day prison sentence in 2022 for her involvement, Hemphill said in a letter she hopes to read to Congress that her punishment fit her crime and doesn’t believe the DOJ was weaponized against her.

She claimed guilt and accused Trump supporters and Trump himself of “gaslighting” and changing the narrative of Jan. 6 to paint the protesters as victims rather than perpetrators.

“The desire to be a Patriotic American was weaponized against the Capitol, the rule of law, and against the peaceful transition of power. The events on January 6 did not match the ideals I believed I was supporting. I feel ashamed that I couldn’t see it at the moment,” she said in her letter. “If we are to be Patriots who love this country, we must stand up and speak out with the facts. That includes elected officials who claim to demand facts and evidence, but refuses to operate in the same fact-based reality.”

However, not every protester in Washington, D.C., on that day shares the same perspective.

Amy Lima, a real estate agent from South Carolina who flew to attend the protest, said the masses were calm and not engaged in any preemptive riot. She called it a “spiritual experience.”

Reports from the DOJ say 140 police officers were assaulted on Jan. 6, including 80 members of the U.S. Capitol Police and 60 members of the Metropolitan Police Department.

Lima never entered the Capitol that day and wasn’t accused of crimes.

“There was this guy on this megaphone behind me, I will never forget this, and he kept saying, ‘we need to storm the Capitol. We need to take our country back.’ And there was another guy on another one, and he goes, ‘No, son, that’s not what we do here.’ He totally shut him down, which was how we all felt. He had the feeling that all of us had, and that’s why they couldn’t rile us up.”

After standing at the Capitol for a period of time, Lima said many left because there was no food or public restrooms. She recalled a reporter approaching a man next to her asking him what he thought of the violence and riots and he responded, “‘There is no violence or rioting. This is a peaceful protest.’ And he kept walking. And I’m like,’ What in the world is she talking about?’”

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To this day Lima believes the storming of the Capitol was orchestrated to make Trump’s followers look violent.

In recent days, some Republican U.S. senators said they were disappointed by Trump pardoning defendants who may have assaulted police officers.

“I think that whether you’re in Baton Rouge, New Orleans, Shreveport, Monroe, Lafayette, Alexandria, Lake Charles or Washington, D.C., it’s wrong to assault anybody — but certainly to assault an officer,” Sen. Bill Cassidy, R-La, said according to NBC News. “I’m a big back-the-blue guy.”

North Carolina GOP Sen. Thom Tillis told NBC he “just can’t agree,” with Trump’s actions. “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 — that should give you everything you need to know about my position.”

President Donald Trump signs an executive order pardoning about 1,500 defendants charged in the Jan. 6 attack on the U.S. Capitol in the Oval Office of the White House, Monday, Jan. 20, 2025, in Washington. | Evan Vucci
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