In what could be the longest legal fire, several of the prisoners for breaking into the U.S. Capitol are hoping that President Donald Trump will use some of his last hours in office to grant protesters full and complete pardon.
Trump’s longtime advisers are asking him against such a move, but protesters say his argument is convincing: they went to the Capitol to support Trump, and now that they are facing charges of up to 20 years in prison, it’s time for Trump to support they.
“I feel like I was basically following my president. I was following what we were called to do. He asked us to fly there. He asked us to be there. So I was doing what he asked of us, ”said Jenna Ryan, a Dallas area real estate agent who took a private jet for the January 6 rally and the ensuing riot to interrupt the election of the president-elect. Joe Biden.
Ryan – that prosecutors say they posted a video now deleted from her marching to Capitol with the words: “Let’s get in here. Life or death ”- said to the Dallas KTVT television station:“ I think we all deserve a pardon. I am facing a prison sentence. I don’t think I deserve this. “
Perhaps the most well-known troublemaker, the so-called “QAnon Shaman” who invaded the Senate chamber and posed on the dais with a spear, wearing a fur hat with horns and animal skins, is also begging for forgiveness.
Jacob Chansley’s lawyer told the Associated Press that he contacted White House chief of staff Mark Meadows about a possible pardon on behalf of the Arizona man, recognizing that it may be a reach, but that there is nothing to lose in picking it up.
If Chansley did not get pardon, attorney Albert Watkins said, it could offer the added benefit of further awakening his client to the fact that his devotion to Trump has not been matched, comparing him to being a rejected lover or even a member of a cult.
“The only thing missing from the Capitol was the president, our president, shaking Kool-Aid with a big spoon,” said Watkins.
Dominic Pezzola, a man from Rochester, New York, and a far-right supporter of the Proud Boys, who was seen in a video using a transparent police shield to break a Capitol window, also explored for forgiveness, but his lawyer said he there was not enough time to make this happen.
“Believing that the president will give carte blanche to these pardons is a kind of fantasy,” defense lawyer Mike Scibetta told the AP. “I think that would cast a shadow over your own impeachment defense.”
Trump, who has long reveled in suspense, was expected to spend his last full day in office issuing a flood of pardons for up to 100 people, two people informed of the plans told the AP.
But if Harvard law professor Alan Dershowitz has a say, the more than 150 protesters arrested so far and the other thousands of suspects should not be among them.
Dershowitz, who represented Trump at his first impeachment last year, told the AP that he was not approached by any of the troublemakers to ask for forgiveness, but even if he did, “it would be wrong to forgive troublemakers who committed crimes”.
South Carolina Republican Senator Lindsey Graham, who often speaks to Trump, was among confidants who asked the president not to go there.
“I don’t care if you went there and threw flowers on the floor, you violated the security of the Capitol, you interrupted a joint session of Congress, you tried to intimidate us all,” Graham said on Fox News channel “Sunday Morning Futures. ”“ You must be prosecuted to the fullest extent of the law and seeking forgiveness from these people would be wrong.
He warned that such a move “would destroy President Trump”.
Forgiveness usually goes through an extensive verification process at the Department of Justice. The Pardon Attorney’s Office, which handles these reviews, did not respond to a request for comment, but former federal prosecutors said that Trump giving leniency to those on Capitol Hill would be highly unusual.
Such pardons would be “a slap in the face for the police officers who protected the Capitol and our leaders who were inside,” said Joe Brown, who until last year was a US attorney in Texas.
Not all those accused of the January 6 riot are looking for forgiveness. Victoria Bergeson, of Groton, Connecticut, who faces charges of violating the curfew and illegal entry, wants her case to “just go away” but sees the acceptance of forgiveness “as an admission that she did something wrong intentionally”, said his lawyer Samuel Bogash.
“She doesn’t want to do this due to the justifiable fear of how the public would perceive it,” he said. “It is already being tracked online.”
Noah Bookbinder, the executive director of Citizens for Responsibility and Ethics in Washington, a watchdog group, said that Trump’s use of his powers of clemency created a “loot system” for his allies and forgiving insurrectionists would be just another version. extreme.
“That this president is willing, even to forgive those who rose up against the United States,” he said, “would be the final statement of his perversion of the purpose behind forgiveness.”
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Bleiberg reported from Dallas, New York’s Mustian. Jill Colvin, a reporter for the AP White House, contributed to this report.