Donald Trump loomed large over the federal courthouse in Washington, DC, last week as people who rioted at the US Capitol on January 6, 2021, to stop the peaceful transfer of power and the judges overseeing their cases grappled with the meaning of the former president’s victory.
Trump repeatedly said during his campaign that he would pardon some people who participated in the attack if reelected, and a number of criminal defendants last week seized on his pledge and sought to delay any new action in their cases.
Attorneys for some defendants also suggested Trump’s victory was unfair in light of the fact that rioters are still being prosecuted and sentenced. Special counsel Jack Smith, meanwhile, is winding down the January 6 criminal case against Trump.
“The person who planned that day is never going to suffer any consequences for his role in it,” attorney Elizabeth Mullin said in a hearing last week before her client, Jaimee Avery, who had pleaded guilty to two low-level charges and was given 18 months of probation.
Talk of potential presidential pardons permeated at least one violent rioter’s sentencing Thursday, when Zachary Alam told a judge he had no remorse for his actions. “Sometimes you have to break the rules to do what’s right,” Alam said.
Alam, dressed in orange prison clothes, went on to say that there has been a lot of talk of pardons, but that he “will not accept a second-class pardon. I want a full pardon.”
“Instead of pardons of innocence, some January 6ers should receive pardons of patriotism,” Alam added.
US District Judge Dabney Friedrich, a Trump appointee, later said Alam was “delusional” to think that his actions on January 6 were patriotic. Instead, she said, they represented a “full-throttled attack on the constitutional principles” of the country.
Alam was convicted on multiple felony and misdemeanor counts stemming from his participation in the Capitol attack. Prosecutors say he battled police officers and broke through the window on the door leading to the House floor, the same window rioter Ashli Babbitt attempted to climb through before she was shot and killed.
As Friedrich sentenced Alam to eight years in prison, she noted that his actions the day of the attack “were among the most violent and aggressive” of the rioters.
Nicholas Fuller, a Minnesota man who pleaded guilty to civil disorder for pushing back the police line on the west side of the Capitol, was among several defendants who tried to push back their sentencing hearings or other proceedings because of Trump’s pardon promise.
“President-elect Trump, who played an integral role in the events of January 6, 2021, has repeatedly publicly stated that he will pardon January 6 protestors should he win the presidency,” Michelle Peterson, an attorney for Fuller, wrote in court papers.
The judge overseeing Fuller’s case decided to keep the sentencing hearing on the books. Peterson, in an attempt to get a light sentence for Fuller, tried to make clear on Friday that her client did not view his actions the same way Trump might.
“The former president and president-elect is claiming that these people are patriots and deserve our thanks,” Peterson told US District Judge Colleen Kollar-Kotelly, a Bill Clinton appointee. “Mr. Fuller is not saying that.”
“He never suggested after January 6 that his actions were justified,” Peterson added, urging the judge to account for Fuller’s remorse when she imposed a sentence.
Just before ordering Fuller to serve three years of probation, Kollar-Kotelly stressed that his actions and those of other rioters are “incompatible with the peaceful transfer of power” between presidential administrations and said she hopes the transition from President Joe Biden to Trump will be peaceful.
Fuller’s conduct represented an “unacceptable attack on our democracy,” which, the judge said, he should be lucky to be living in instead of under an authoritarian leader.
“And hopefully we will continue that way,” Kollar-Kotelly added.
Nearly 1,200 rioters guilty
Trump has repeatedly and falsely said the deadly riot was peaceful, using phrases such as “day of love.”
As of last week, roughly 1,561 people have been charged in association with the Capitol attack, including nearly 170 charged with causing serious bodily harm to a police officer or using a deadly or dangerous weapon.
Nearly 980 people have pleaded guilty, and another 210 people were found guilty at trial, according to the US Justice Department. More than 645 defendants were ordered to serve some jail time.
During one sentencing hearing Thursday for a nonviolent Capitol rioter, US District Judge Christopher Cooper suggested that the way federal judges in DC have handled the January 6 cases might have been why Election Day “passed peacefully.”
“I think the fact, perhaps, that, you know, this past election, knock wood, has passed peacefully may be a result of the sentences that we have handed down and the seriousness with which we have handled January 6 cases in this court,” said Cooper, a Barack Obama appointee.
“I hope that that message has gotten out, and part of that message is that there will be consequences for actions,” he added.
