President Trump mass pardoned January 6th rioters, many who violently attacked police officers. The rioters were convicted in U.S. courts with due process. But the pardons undermine those court rulings, and possibly the concept of rule of law in America.
Paula Reid, main legal correspondent in CNN.
Mary McCord, executive director of the Institute for Constitutional Advocacy and Protection and Visiting Professor of Law at Georgetown University Law Center.
Part I
Meghna Chakrabarti: hours after being released from the federal criminal last week, Enrique Tarrio asked the show of Alex Jones. Jones is a right animator and a conspiracy theorist who said that the United States government had organized the attacks of September 11, Oklahoma City’s attack and the 1969 TouchDown moon.
Jones also issued a brutal circle of relatives of the young people killed in the Sandy hook, Connecticut, discovered guilty for this. And a Pass trial ordered him to pay more than $ 1 billion in damage to Sandy Hook’s parents. Instead, he declared himself in bankruptcy. Now, Alex Jones has also partially funded the manifestations of Donald Trump who took their position in Washington, D. C. , on January 6, 2021.
He supported efforts to overturn the 2020 election and spoke to Trump supporters on January 6th before that crowd went on to attack the U.S. Capitol. Jones called it, quote, a turning point in American history, end quote. Now, why am I explaining Alex Jones’s background? Well, because it has to do with Enrique Tarrio.
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He is the leader of the militia organization, the proud children. And one of his links with Jones is January 6. Tarrio had turned 22 in criminal after being discovered that he blamed the sedicious conspiracy opposed to the United States for his participation in the attack on the American Capitol. And this is what Tarrio said about Jones.
ENRIQUE TARRIO: Success is going to be retribution, you know, we got to do everything in our power to make sure that the next four years sets us up for the next hundred years.
Chakrabarti: 22 years of Tarrio, the longest prayer of only about 1,600 people who have been federally accused in relation to January 6, the Tarrio not physically in the Capitol of the Day of the Attack.
In fact, he had been arrested two days before in a separate and tidy case outside Washington, D. C. A complete forgiveness of President Donald Trump.
That’s when he called Alex Jones.
TARRIO: I’m happy that the president’s focusing not on retribution and focusing on success, but I will tell you, I’m not going to play by those rules. The people who did this, they need to feel the heat. They need to be put behind bars. They pardoned the J6 committee, fine. In this country, our case proves that you could be imprisoned for anything.
Chakrabarti: The Jan. 6 investigation was the largest conducted through the Department of Justice in U. S. history. On the first day of his presidency, President Trump disappointed this by issuing pardons or switches for more than 1,500 people charged in the Jan. 6 attack. Trump signed the order in his own old black Sharpie.
Donald Trump: Then it’s great. Something you need about this? We hope they fainted tonight, frankly.
CHAKRABARTI: On January 6, 2021, rioters stormed the U.S. Capitol, and they damaged the building, defecated in its halls. They threatened the U.S. government and the people who serve it, and they temporarily stopped the constitutionally mandated electoral vote confirmation process.
Many also violently attacked police officers. Trump’s blanket pardons do not distinguish between those who did and did not commit physical violence at the Capitol. Even though roughly 140 police officers were brutally attacked that day. And some 172 defendants pleaded guilty to assaulting law enforcement.
Officer [Daniel] Hodges tried to hold the line on January 6th at the Capitol. He still works for the D.C. Metropolitan Police Department, and he talked to reporters after Trump pardoned the people who attacked him.
DANIEL HODGES: They called me a traitor, telling me to remember my oath.
I was beaten, crushed, kicked, punched, surrounded. Someone reached underneath my visor, tried to gouge out my eye.
And all these people were just pardoned by Donald Trump, who says that they were the real victims. That they were the patriots. I don’t understand how anyone can believe that.
CHAKRABARTI: Trump’s actions, though not surprising, are not in line with what his own vice president claimed would happen in the days just prior to Trump’s inauguration.
About two weeks ago, in mid-January, the vice president picked J. D. Vance on Fox News. And he seemed to recommend that other people who committed violence would not be forgiven.
JD Vance: I think it’s very simple. Look, if you are protesting peacefully on January 6, and the Department of Justice of Merrick Garland has been treated as a member of a gang, they forgive him.
If he committed violence that day, he doesn’t forgive him. And there is a little gray domain there.
CHAKRABARTI: Clearly, that’s not what Trump did. He issued that blanket pardon. Now, the mass pardons were not universally welcomed by Republicans. A few dared to speak out. Here’s Republican Senator Lindsey Graham of South Carolina.
He at the NBC press assembly this weekend.
Lindsey Graham: I’m afraid you’re getting more violence. To obtain other people who entered the Capitol and beat a police officer violently, I think it is a mistake, because it is recommended to be something intelligent.
Chakrabarti: Jackson Reffitt told ABC News that he was also worried.
His father was sentenced to seven years in prison for the January 6th attack. And that happened after Jackson turned his own father into authorities. Now, his dad is free.
Jackson Reffitt: I love him and I sought him out after getting help in prison, however, the only thing he has is more radicalized. He does not want any more contact with those excessive right-wing militias to validate him.
He wants a memory and this forgiveness does not go to him. This will validate and justify all the measures you have taken before this point. And that is what scares me, is who knows what this validation can lead.
Chakrabarti: another man, Stewart Rhodes, on the most sensible Trump switching list.
He is the founder and leader of the extreme right -wing group, The Oath Keepers. It has served for 18 years in a seditious plot opposite to the United States in relation to the attack on January 6. After being released this month from Maryland. Jail, Rhodes waited outside the D. C. For other defendants, and then spoke with the media.
Stewart Rhodes: I think it’s a smart day for the United States, which it is, all mistakes are defeated. So, none of those other people have been here first. None of them have been attempted in a fair test.
Reporter: And what about the Capitol Police officers who were injured in this area?
RHODES: What do you mean, what do I say?
Reporter: I mean, there’s Capitol police who are seriously injured.
Rhodes: Okay, so?
Report: And they’re worried that other people won’t have to face charges.
Rhodes: No, they have charges they have faced, but as I said, it is presumed that you are not guilty until you have shown you guilty, until you get a trial just before a fair jury. It will make the government a popular beyond a moderate doubt, before a judgment on who is also fair.
It will keep the government with evidence of proving evidence on discharge and testifying. Until you get this fair trial, it is supposed to be proven until proven guilty.
Chakrabarti: After his release, Rhodes also visited the American Capitol, the very construction that he had attacked 4 years earlier, to protect the release of some other swear guard.
Since then, a trial pass has barred Rhodes from entering the Capitol or Washington, D. C. without judicial authorization. Now, we search after skipping this story, because it’s been 4 years since that exclusive and horrific day in U. S. history, January 6, 2021.
And with those general forgives for other people who have tried to interrupt the non -violent movement of power, anything that has been happening for centuries in this country, and have tried to do so, in many cases, violently, which calls the religion of This country in this country in the total concept of the rule of law.
So this is what we are going through to communicate today. But let’s start with some main points about this forgiveness, or those forgives, and we will pass to Paula Reid. He is a legal correspondent at CNN. Paula, it is wonderful to see you again.
Paula Reid: And thank you very much for inviting me.
Chakrabarti: And thanks for listening to this story that we feel greatly, we seek to return.
I mean, with that context in mind, spend a minute giving us more details. I said forgiveness and switches, however, one of the things was incredibly. What happened?
Reid: Yes, it’s true. Look, a pen of a pen, has just finished 1,600 cases, since January 6, in another 3 ways.
Most of the other people, the overwhelming majority of other people, who had been convicted, won Indones. 14 Other people decided to change. This means that their sentence is annihilated, they can leave prison, but they still have this prayer. But there will be a procedure to review the changers, and some of the 14 other 14 people will possibly obtain forgiveness.
And the last organization was other people whose instances are still pending. These instances will be rejected. But what was promised to us was so that this nuanced, violent non -violent versus approach. But it was transparent in recent months of informing and talking to Trump’s advisors who would probably be much broader. Because they decided to do it the first day, and they were resistant to any type of process, you know, the individual case, through the evaluation case, would take time.
Chakrabarti: their advisors who were resistant to the procedure or President Trump himself?
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REID: So Trump had vowed to do this on day one. So his advisors tasked with figuring out, okay, how do we do this? The one thing they said is we’re not going to do a case-by-case basis. This isn’t going to be the usual process.
And I said, okay, well, how are you going to make this distinction, which Trump points out, needs to do it. Vance, even the president of the Chamber has said that they will make the difference between violent and non -violent criminals. Because it is a very violent event. And if it makes a base on a case basis, it is difficult to distinguish.
Because even though you said that all those accused of attack will be pardoned. Well, it’s a very wide variety of driving that charges under attack. Also, you have other people like Enrique Tarrio, who you referenced, who didn’t directly have an interaction in the violence that directed him from afar and also won one of the maximum grave sentences.
So it was clear that this was going to take a lot of work. There’s a lot of nuance, if you really want to parse out violent versus nonviolent. But Trump wanted to send a message. And he just said, you know what, let’s just do it this way. So something much more broad than what he had signaled.
Part II
CHAKRABARTI: Today, we are talking about the very concept of the rule of law in the United States and what President Donald Trump’s blanket pardons of all the people charged and convicted or who pleaded guilty, in relation to their participation in the January 6, 2021 riots on the Capitol, what those blanket pardons say about the very concept of the rule of law in this country.
I’m joined today by Paula Reid. She’s chief legal correspondent at CNN. And before I go any further, I just want to correct something I said a little bit earlier. I had mentioned that Oath Keepers leader Stewart Rhodes, it had been determined by a judge that he needs permission to enter the Capitol or Washington, D.C.
Well, it turns out that yesterday, this requirement was revoked through another judge, so you no longer want to allow entry into the rooms or enter the rooms of Congress or enter the city of Washington, D. C. Laws.
He is the former police officer of Capitol Harry Dunn. At the attack site on January 6, 2021. Now, Dunn ran without success for his tasks last year. He lost the number one democratic congress in the 3rd district of Maryland. Last week, he expressed his deep frustration for the pardons.
HARRY DUNN: The Republican Party has long claimed to be the party of law and order. Back to blue. However, many lawmakers silence and refusal to push back against Donald Trump’s actions make it incredibly hard to take that claim serious.
Chakrabarti: Well, here is President Trump himself and he in Fox News with Sean Hannity, and Hannity asked him why he had forgiven the rioters who violently attacked or had violently attacked the police.
Trump: It would be very, very heavy to go through, do you know how many other people we’re talking about?Another 1,500 people, almost all of them, have not been, that has not happened. And the other thing is this. Some of those other people with the police troops, but they’re very minor incidents, okay?You know, they’re built through that, some fake guys who are on CNN all the time.
They were very minor incidents, and it was time. You have murderers in Philadelphia, you have murderers in Los Angeles that don’t even get any time. They don’t even collect them and they know they’re there to be collected. And then they go on television and act holier than thou about this one or that one.
You had 1,500 people that suffered. That’s a lot of people.
Chakrabarti: President Donald Trump in Fox News with Sean Hannity. To bring Mary McCord to verbal exchange now. She is the Executive Director of the Institute of Constitutional Defense and Protection. She is also a visiting law professor at the Law Center at Georgetown.
She served as acting assistant attorney general for national security at the U.S. Department of Justice from 2016 to 2017 and had other positions in in the highest levels of the federal justice system. Mary McCord, welcome back to On Point.
Mary McCord: Thank you, Meghna. It is good to be here.
CHAKRABARTI: Minor incidents? Were these minor incidents in the physical attacks on law enforcement on January 6th?
McCord: No, they weren’t. And it is enough to ask the many judges, the judges of the Federal District Court of the District Court here in the district of Columbia, who discussed those almost 1,600 cases, saw the evidence several times, you know, the violent attacks opposed application agents of the law, the erection of a gallows to verify to suspend Mike Pence, the destruction of the property and the cetera.
And so have the rest of us. We have noticed a video, we listened to its audio, we saw social networks show off. All of this. So, yes, were there other people accused of crimes, whose crimes were not violent and who came in and intruded and things like that?Yes, there is a component of this component of nearly 1,600 whose crimes were nonviolent.
And that’s, you know, why I think other people like J. D. Vance say that those are the other people who are probably forgiven, but Trump has been so much more than that, adding forgiveness that you know, more than six hundred people in charge of assisting or resisting or obstructing the police. And 174 of them did it with a fatal or harmful weapon.
We’re talking about swords, axes, hatchets, knives, etc. So no, not a minor incident. 140 officers severely wounded. One. And one who, you know, several who died. Afterwards.
CHAKRABARTI: Afterwards, right, right. So, I’m glad that you pointed out that we all saw it. Because I think, I mean, some people still, either they don’t remember or haven’t seen all the video or the specific actions that you’re talking about. But the point remains, that the attack on January 6th remains one of the best documented, through video and audio and eyewitness accounts, mass crimes in U.S. history.
And yet, President Trump in some way, in the minds and eyes of his voters, moved the crime as he sees it, of the other people who attacked Congress on January 6 and to the total of the judicial formula of This country. I mean, pay attention to President Trump again. This is his interview with Sean Hannity at Fox News six days ago on Wednesday, January 22.
Only two days after having delivered those pardons, and Sean Hannity asked the president why he had forgiven other people who were cited, convicted or worried about incidents in which they were violent with the police. And this is the first component of what Trump said.
TRUMP: A number of reasons. Number one, they were in there for three and a half years, a long time, and in many, solitary confinement, treated like nobody’s ever been treated, treated so badly.
They were treated like the worst criminals in history. And do you know why they were there?They are protesting against the vote, because they knew that the elections were rigged and that they were protesting for the vote. And it is that he is allowed to protest for a vote. You are allowed to do so. You know, the day, when the day comes.
Hannity: But you shouldn’t be to invade the Capitol.
Trump: No. Ready? Most of the other people were surely innocent. Oky, but forgetting all that, those other people served horribly, for a long time.
Chakrabarti: Well, therefore, Mary, first of all, there were many other people in Washington that day, and also that they had approached the Capitol, which protested peacefully. Only to be clear, as far as we know, in him, you know, in almost 1,600 cases that the Ministry of Justice brought, one of the other people who were out of doors to the Protestant of the Pacificly Capitol.
McCord: I don’t. Unless they were to limited areas. As I said, some were not violent, but there were many, many, many who were in fact involved in violence and many who declared themselves guilty.
Chakrabarti: On the right. And in fact, in the rally beforehand, no one arrested for their moves, right?
That is completely in line with the freedom of speech and expression in this country. But Trump here, the President here is saying that these, the people that the Justice Department charged were the worst treated in U.S. history. I don’t know exactly what he’s talking about there, but, I mean, what’s your response to the President?
Even that.
McCORD: Well, it really seems like this is something that the president is just making up. He’s making up because I think part of the reason he issued these pardons was to really just support his own false narrative about the 2020 election that he has never ever given up on. He’s never ever given up on his claims that it was a rigged election that Joe Biden did not legitimately win.
And so I think part of this is to justify those lies. I mean, we just listened to that clip of him saying as much, about these people had the right to protest a rigged election. There’s no evidence of that. And you know, in terms of their treatment, the judges in the district of Columbia. You know, followed all of the proper procedures and ensured the constitutional rights of the defendants in front of them.
Let me tell you what that means. This means getting other people to have a lawyer. If they can’t, one is appointed for them. If they can a. He is a lawyer of his choice. These attorneys have the ability to take motions before trial, seeking to suppress evidence, seeking to exclude evidence, seeking to dismiss the case.
If they think it’s been unjustly brought, these judges provide them what’s called due process of law, which is this process, right? Of bringing motions, having a defense. Those who sought to plead guilty were read their rights. They waive those rights. Pleaded guilty, agreed to the facts that would be proffered, that were proffered by the prosecutors. Because a guilty plea means the prosecutor says, if this case were to go to trial, here are the facts that the government would prove.
And the trial of the Pass looks at each defendant and says: They agree that, you know, with those facts. And those are willing to blame the pleas that more than a thousand other people have pleaded for. Those who make it to trial, their attorneys may participate in jury selection for this trial.
They’re able to put on a defense at that trial. The defendant, if he so chooses, is able to testify at that trial. And the verdict requires a unanimous verdict. Judges then take information before sentencing. And they include all of that in rendering their sentence.
And I just want to note that judges appointed by Democrats, Democratic presidents, Republican presidents, and Donald Trump himself in his first term have uniformly, at sentencing, decried and denounced the violence and the seriousness of these crimes denounced what was done there and indicated that the attempt here was not just about violence, but also to overturn the results of the election.
CHAKRABARTI: I’m so glad you brought that up, Mary, because I wanted to ask this question.
I mean, I understand a lot about why there’s this focus, especially, you know, amongst political types in Washington and in the media on, well, Trump maybe shouldn’t have pardoned the people who violently attacked law enforcement. But isn’t, in a sense, distinguishing between the two missing the point, right?
Because, yes, I mean, physical violence is abhorrent, no matter what, but so is a kind of political violence, which is also, it was, at least at one time, abhorrent in this country, which is essentially what happened on January 6th. So when we have people who pleaded guilty to, you know, charges of attempting to overthrow the 2020 election and things like that, but yet we in the media are like really focused on shouldn’t Trump have not pardoned the people who violently attacked a police officer?
Do we miss the point?
McCORD: I think you’re very right about that, Meghna, because even for those who were nonviolent, you know, they were prosecuted because they did violate laws, laws that are put in place for public safety, the safety of members of Congress, those who are going in and out of the Capitol building to do their jobs, and to protect things like the constitutionally required meeting of both houses of Congress to certify the electoral vote.
And, you know, just to mention a few things that the judgment of approval said in sentencing, you know, a passing judgment about the court not being able to tolerate the shameless attempts of the defendant and anyone else to misread or distort what happened. It cannot tolerate the concept that those who broke the law on January 6 did nothing or that those duly convicted by all the promises of the U. S. Constitution, adding the right to consult through the jury in Crook cases, are political prisoners or hostages.
And then he said on January 6th, a mob of people invaded and occupied the U.S. Capitol using force to interrupt the peaceful transfer of power mandated by the constitution and our Republican heritage. This was not patriotism. It was the antithesis of patriotism. So that’s, you know, a Republican judge on the fence for almost 40 years.
And at the time, there was no explanation as to why for any of those pardons. I think other people rationalize, well, if there were going to be pardons, they should in fact not apply to other people who, you know, have committed acts of violence, but a pardon is an act of mercy that is regularly earned when an accused has accepted responsibility, has replaced his life for the better, maybe purged a very long sentence.
The pellets are after the user who has already finished their prayer. And they contributed to the network and have demonstrated, you know, how much they have changed or used when the practices of discovering the penalty have changed radically. Therefore, sanctions, for example, in drug crimes, years ago in the 1980s, were incredibly long.
These sentences have now been reduced, so it is unfair to those convicted at that time to comply with such long sentences. Therefore, they are, therefore, the type of other people who receive pellets or a change, right? A short of the prayer that still keeps the conviction. But those are things that you look individually.
And the forgiveness of the canopy that does not look at the seriousness of the crime, its regret or its abse of a force given to the president under the constitution of the United States.
Chakrabarti: Well, I assure you that in the near future, I need to make an exhibition to do, take a very analyzed eye to the total concept of presidential forgiveness. We will do it a little later.
But I carry your point of view. I mean, a crime committed opposite to the political framework of the United States, to the right, opposed to the country as a whole. Paula Reid, I know that we have compiled it here and I wanted to ask him again, from his point of view, not only as a legal investigator, but also in his contacts with the Ministry of Justice.
I think about what Stewart Rhodes, the leader of the oath guardians, said in that clip that we played in the most sensible program, just after we were released from the prison. His statement that he is necessarily an opponent of everything Mary has only had described, in terms of how the justice formula in the more than 1,500 cases works.
I mean, Rhodes said he hadn’t gotten a fair trial, that the jury isn’t fair, that the government didn’t stay popular without any reasonable. He said that the judges in those cases were not alone. He even said that the government had not given evidence or, excuse me, defense evidence to defense attorneys.
It also made some, a confirmation regarding the testimony of perjury. I mean, what is your answer to this? Or, you know, the contacts you have within the Ministry of Justice about this wholesale complaint or even a constant rejection of the legal formula that many forgives of January 6 claim?
Reid: Sounds very similar to President Trump, right? Everything is unfair. He is a victim. He was an unfair judge. It was an unfair jury. They are politically motivated prosecutors. It is a very similar statement. I mean that I only appeal if it takes into account that there were genuine hardware problems, hardware problems.
So here, you know, there is no acceptance of duty and an attempt to undermine the legitimacy of the process, not only through it, but also through President Trump. And now we are seeing Trump’s Department of Justice do this too. Yesterday we saw, or on Monday, we saw that they were beginning to investigate prosecutors in particular who charged the obstruction of justice.
Saying that, you know it was a waste of resources. Because, as we know, the Supreme Court despite everything ruled that the obstruction of justice simply cannot be accused. The obstruction may not be billed with respect to January 6, this is not what the law is intended, however, that turns out to be a component of an effort to undermine the entire survey on this matter, undermining the legitimacy to help, and You know, you know, you know, you know, you know, you know, you know, you know, you know, you know, you know, you know, you know. Push back in opposition to some of the criticism Trump has received.
For really just ending all of the cases stemming from January 6th.
Part III
Chakrabarti: Today, we’re talking about President Donald Trump’s pardon for the canopy of other people who have been indicted and pleaded for guilt or who have been found to be blamed for crimes similar to the January 6 attack on Congress. What this canopy of this country’s religion says in the rule of law.
And I’m well aware that, when he left the White House, President Biden also issued a giant number of Indonesians. So I just need to promise everybody, again, in the future, we’re going to make a show that you look at presidential pardons as a whole. But let’s pay attention to what House Speaker Mike Johnson said about Trump’s resolution to pardon more than 1,500 people.
And he spoke at a news conference just last week.
MIKE JOHNSON: I think what was made clear all along is that peaceful protests and people who engage in that should never be punished. There was a weaponization of the Justice Department. There was a weaponization of the events. You know, the prosecutions that happened after January 6th.
It was a horrible moment and a horrible bankruptcy in the history of the United States. The president has made his decision. I do not suppose them. And yes, you know, that’s the type of my philosophy, my worldview. At the time, if I could, I would say that these other people did not pay a great sanction after being imprisoned and all that depends on you.
But the president has made a decision. We are moving forward. There are bigger days ahead of us. That’s what we’re passionate about. We have not returned. We are moving forward.
Chakrabarti: This is how President Mike Johnson, Paula, on this armed claim of the Department of Justice, you know, this greater investigation that the Department of Justice has undertaken in the history of the United States. I suppose what are the consequences of the internal degrees of the department. Justice? I mean, how do the hundreds respond, if not thousands, other people who have worked in those cases?
REID: Well, it’s of course demoralizing. Because this was a massive case that was supported by videos and pictures, I mean thousands, thousands and thousands of pieces of evidence that really make it hard to doubt that this happened or that certain individuals engaged in certain conduct.
But this is a component of a larger war that attacks the integrity of the decomposition of justice, which Trump has been doing for a long time, his supporters are also doing it. I think that what is a bit more here is the forgiveness of other people who dedicated violence, possibly in Trump’s call. Send a terrifying effect because you can send a message, well, if you dedicate violence in my call, it supports you.
And that is enormously concerning, because you also have a president whose power and immunity has just been expanded by the Supreme Court. The Supreme Court just gave him absolute immunity for anything that could qualify as a quote, official act. So together, I think a lot of these decisions and a lot of these events are deeply, deeply concerning to people inside the Justice Department.
Chakrabarti: I see reports that recommend that many other people leave the government in the Department of Justice. Have you noticed something similar?
Reid: Then other people left. Part of this is not unusual in the transition. Some other people also made Trump’s management once, without temperament to do so twice.
And certainly, after Trump’s re-election, I know I heard a source that runs on a legal body of labor agency, in particular leaves other people in the government and puts them into personal practice, and I said they had just been flooded. with calls. So, not only are other people demoralized, I think other people are also afraid, but there are also other people who, I think, need to stay and continue to do their work.
But the incoming Trump Justice Department officials, they have such a deep-seated distrust and dislike of career officials, which is, you know, why we saw yesterday them firing several career officials who worked on the special counsel investigation in violation of civil service protections. There is a deep, deep distrust there.
Chakrabarti: Oh, I see what to talk about, that the prosecutors who worked on Trump investigations were fired recently, more than a dozen.
Reid: career prosecutors.
CHAKRABARTI: Career prosecutors. Okay. So that just recently happened. All right. So let’s once again listen to what President Donald Trump himself has said about the actions that he took in these blanket mass pardons.
Once again, he spoke at length to Sean Hannity on Fox News. And here’s another part of his answer when Hannity asked him why he had pardoned the violent rioters.
Trump: And you know what? These people, and I do not say in each case, but there is a lot of patriotism with those people. A lot of patriotism.
You know, they made a recording, and you know, they asked me if I would do the voiceover and I did, you know, it’s the number one sale. What do you call it today, album, song, whatever –
Hannity: CD?
TRUMP: Whatever you call it. You don’t know. It changes every year, right? But it was the number one selling song, number one on Billboard, number one on everything, on everything, for so long.
People understand. They sought to see those other people break free.
HANNITY: American people were aware. You told them what you would do.
Chakrabarti: He is President Donald Trump in Fox News with Sean Hannity. And along the way, a song that other people imprisoned for their attack on Congress, understood, I think, is the national anthem.
Donald Trump used this on the track of the Crusade. Now, here, officer Danny Hodges with the D. C. Metropolitan Police Department. He heard it before, because he was emotionally disturbed by the fact that the other people who physically attacked him on January 6 came here from forgiveness.
He told reporters at a press conference last week that he is still on the job and in fact worked at President Donald Trump’s inauguration just this month.
HODGES: It was kind of surreal on Inauguration Day, having all these people wearing MAGA hats. They saw me and they saw my uniform. They recognized who I was.
They thanked me for my service. And that reminded me of January 6, 2021, because that morning, they also thanked me for my service. And then they entered the ellipse and listened to Donald Trump to speak. And he told them that they had to fight, then he sent them to the Capitol. And once they went to the Capitol, they didn’t thank me anymore.
CHAKRABARTI: D.C. Metropolitan Police Officer Danny Hodges. So Mary, you know, in the list of 100 questions that people who wish to become naturalized citizens of the United States. There is a question that says, what is the rule of law? And the answer is very, very simple. The answer is nobody is above the law.
I mean, how complete you say that this concept is how the US judicial formula is intended to function?
McCord: It is in the heart. And I will expand and give you some additional problems that no one is above the law, however, this is how you summarize it in some way. I would describe it in 4 ways. It is a legislation formula that govern the two. This means that other people and government have agreed to respect. This is because there is transparency in the promulgation and application of this law.
So people, so that there are predictability and stability. There is a daily rights formula and work that are fair and maintain the rights of people. And there are, in this formula, impartial lawyers and judges, competent and independent, right? All this is combined to take what you just said.
No one is above this, the government or the government. And that is what you know, this type of covers of covers that is why it is also the reason why the immunity resolution of the Supreme Court has undermined this rule of law, because it provides the president, under his office, immunity Absolute for official acts, which come with the stops.
And then the alleged immunity of the things that are possibly, you know, within the outer limits of the official acts, which is anything that we do not know precisely what are the parameters of that. And only one type of gate for force abuse in a way that is absolutely incompatible with independent adhesion to the rule of law is opening.
CHAKRABARTI: Paula, did you want to respond to that or add to that?
And again, I think you have to take the pellets into the mix with what the Supreme Court says when we look ahead to the next 4 years. I mean, President Trump, his advisers, come into the White House, and they’ll say, like, now they revel.
They are more complicated by consulting to achieve their goals. But then he had this upper part and the extended force he gave him through the Supreme Court. And he sent this dog to whistle, really, his followers. That if you do violence in my name, it supports you. All those things in combination are deeply worrisome.
Chakrabarti: Well, it makes me wonder Mary, and I’m going to turn you around. The kind of complaint basically, or doubt, that President Trump and many of his supporters now have about the judicial formula of justice, in the United States.
Can we say that, essentially, this can potentially be a mirror symbol of the kinds of complaints and doubts that other people have had in the court system?I mean, you know, a long time ago considerations about racial bias in the court system, about wrongful convictions, you know, judging the purchases, the jury purchases. You know the list bigger than I do.
Is this the kind of continuous herbal evolution that we’ve had as Americans in terms of all our confidence in how the rule of law works in practice in American courts?
McCORD: So the difference, I think, is that those criticisms, and many are very legitimate. You know, I and others, you know, have worked to bring cases and advance policies that will reform some of the systemic issues, particularly as you indicated, when it comes to racial bias within the system, and things like that.
The remedy of other people who are too deficient to pay the deposit, that kind of thing, which, they would say, are not the challenges of bonds, not a challenge in the federal formula. Because someone who cannot pay a deposit cannot be stopped, just because he cannot. But many states at all times have this deposit formula that leaves other people imprisoned for long periods, even before they download a trial.
Therefore, there are valid criticisms, and there is a lot of room for reform. I would say the differences; These criticisms and attacks are well-founded. They are data-driven. There’s the explanation as to why for literally things, it can involve genuine biases and genuine constitutional violations, such as the detention of other people who are too deficient to pay the deposit. When someone with cash to pay a deposit would be released, right?
They can, those things have a basis. What Donald Trump and his followers, adding to the pardoned, to the maximum of them, I will not say about them, because I perceive that there is at least one user who refused the pardon.
But they only create from a total fabric, a false story about what happened on January 6. And we have heard it on his program, repeated through the president, repeated through some of those pardoned people. And that’s the difference. It’s just a lie that’s spreading now, because, you know, since January 6, 2021.
Really ever since before that, before the election in 2020, Donald Trump had already started to say that if he didn’t win, it was because there was a rigged system, and that there was fraud in the election. And 65 court cases said there’s no evidence of fraud significant enough to change the outcome of the election.
They rejected that, the Republicans, the Democratic judges, etc.
Chakrabarti: Well, you know, I’m thinking about how in the gang we played Republican lawmakers, even the ones who went so far as to say they didn’t agree with President Trump’s resolution to pardon other people who had been convicted of violent attacks on law enforcement.
His comments then imply a “but” or a “however. And then compare it with the movements of President Biden. For example, here is Senator Markwayne Mullen, Republican of Oklahoma. And on January 21, he in CNN. And and He and he said he did not necessarily agree with Trump’s resolution to forgive all uproar.
But then he said that the idea that any president had the right to factor the pardons.
MARKWAYNE MULLEN: I have my personal feelings on it, but the American people have chose to move on. And President Trump, it’s his prerogative to do this. He did not hide that he was going to pardon January 6th individuals that was wrongfully charged by the DOJ. I get what you’re saying about the violent crimes.
However, it is still the president’s prerogative, as was the prerogative of Joe Biden to release the 37 murders or travel his sentences. It is the president’s prerogative. The authority.
And the other American people have selected to put President Trump in overwhelming support.
Chakrabarti: He is the senator of Markwayne Mullen de Oklahoma. Paula, what do you think?
REID: Well, here’s the thing about the presidential pardon power, unlike some of Trump’s other moves, is it is absolute, and it is expansive, but this is not exactly what he said he would do.
Right. Both he and Vance and the speaker assured people that violent offenders would not be pardoned. And that is exactly what he did. So I don’t think we can let him ‘but Joe Biden,’ his way out of that. But former President Biden did give them some political talking points. By saying repeatedly that he wouldn’t pardon his son Hunter and then pardoning him instead of commuting a sentence or doing something else.
And then pardoning many members of his family. I mean, legally it doesn’t make a difference. Trump had the power; Biden had the power. But politically, they use a lot of the moves that former President Biden made to justify their own more broad pardons. Even back two months ago, when I was talking to the Trump advisors about how they would do this.
And I said, look, this sounds like it’s going to be pretty broad. Every time it would be, but Hunter Biden, didn’t you see what he just did with Hunter Biden? It was as if he gave them like a political license to do whatever they wanted here. So again, legally, it doesn’t make a difference, but politically they’ve definitely seized on the moves that Joe Biden made to justify.
You know, doing what they said they would.
CHAKRABARTI: Yeah. Well, Paula Reid, Chief Legal Correspondent for CNN. Thank you, Paula, for joining us as always.
REID: Thank you.
Chakrabarti: Mary, I need to ask you the last question. Because for me, it turns out that confidence in the rule of law is one of the key things that keeps a democracy together, right?
Because we agree as a country that we are going to respect this broader formula that is destined to be implemented similarly to all of us. If that trust is frayed, what does that say? We are, I’m sorry, we have 30 seconds, Mary, but what does that say about our confidence in the aptitude or legitimacy of our own democracy?
McCord: Well, he raises a very harmful perspective, right? Where are we going from here? And I would like to close with an appointment of one of the judges of the District Court who then had to rule a request aimed at rejecting one of the suspense matters after the forgives. And you know, he said, he has not happened here nationally.
No national reconciliation procedure can begin when poor losers whose favorite candidate loses an election is glorified to disturb mandatory procedures through the Constitution in Congress and do it with impunity. This only increases the harmful spectrum of long -term behavior without law through other poor losers and undermines the rule of law.
This program aired on January 28, 2025.
Claire Donly produced, in Pointclaire Donly, is a producer.
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Meghna Chakrabarti Host, On PointMeghna Chakrabarti is the host of On Point.
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