WASHINGTON — Celebrated by his base and far-right allies, President Donald Trump’s pardons granted to the more than 1,500 people charged with and convicted of crimes connected to the Jan. 6, 2021, attack on the U.S. Capitol by his supporters have drawn considerable condemnation by Democrats, law enforcement officers who defended Congress that day and Vice President Mike Pence, and even some senior Republican lawmakers.

The pardons — as well as the commutations of 14 defendants’ sentences — wiped clean four years of Justice Department efforts to hold the rioters accountable for crimes that included the assault of more than 100 law enforcement officers and seditious conspiracy. The leaders of the far-right street gang the Proud Boys and the militia known as the Oath Keepers were among those freed after the Monday night order by Trump on his first day back in office. 

What You Need To Know

  • President Donald Trump’s pardons granted to the more than 1,500 people charged with and convicted of crimes connected to the Jan. 6, 2021, attack on the U.S. Capitol by his supporters have drawn considerable condemnation by Democrats, law enforcement officers who defended Congress that day and Vice President Mike Pence, and even some senior Republican lawmakers

  • The pardons — as well as the commutations of 14 defendants’ sentences — wiped clean four years of Justice Department efforts to hold the rioters accountable for crimes that included the assault of more than 100 law enforcement officers and seditious conspiracy

  • he leaders of the far-right street gang the Proud Boys and the militia known as the Oath Keepers were among those freed after the Monday night order by Trump on his first day back in office
  • South Dakota Sen. John Thune, the new Senate majority leader, told reporters Tuesday that he would have preferred Trump consider the pardons “on a case-by-case basis. But we’re looking to the future, not the past”

“We’re going through it now. Many of them, probably, was the right thing to do. They made a bad choice. But anyone who was convicted of assault on a police officer, I can’t get there at all. I think it was a bad idea,” North Carolina Sen. Thom Tillis, a Republican up for reelection in 2026, told Spectrum News on Tuesday. 

Tillis, who also criticized President Joe Biden’s last-minute pardons on Monday, said it was “a legit question” whether Congress should consider reining in the president’s pardon powers. 

Kentucky Sen. Mitch McConnell, who recently stepped aside as Republican leader after nearly two decades, told Semafor he agreed with Vice President JD Vance’s sentiments from earlier this month. Vance said in a Fox News interview that those who “protested peacefully” should be pardoned and “if you committed violence on that day, obviously you shouldn’t be pardoned,” but later hedged his comments after backlash from his right flank.

“No one should excuse violence. And particularly violence against police officers,” McConnell said. 

McConnell’s successor as majority leader, South Dakota Sen. John Thune, told reporters Tuesday that he would have preferred Trump consider the pardons “on a case-by-case basis. But we’re looking to the future, not the past.”

“It was the president’s decision," Thune said. "I don’t have much more for you. We know that the presidential pardon authority was expanded in a massive way by Biden. And obviously we knew all along Trump was going to exercise it like most presidents have. And he did.”

As of Jan. 6 of this year, four years after the violent attack by Trump supporters in a bid to keep the then-president in power after his 2020 election loss, more than 1,580 people had been criminally charged by federal prosecutors for their actions that day. More than 600 of those were charged with “assaulting, resisting, or impeding law enforcement agents or officers or obstructing those officers during a civil disorder, including approximately 174 defendants charged with using a deadly or dangerous weapon or causing serious bodily injury to an officer,” according to the Justice Department. 

“The people who invaded the Capitol on January 6th, whether they committed violence or not, should not have been pardoned," Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer, a New York Democrat, said in a statement. "They unlawfully broke into the Capitol to stop the peaceful transfer of power. What they did is a serious crime. Donald Trump is ushering in a Golden Age for people that break the law and attempt to overthrow the government.”

House Speaker Emerita Nancy Pelosi, who Trump threatened with criminal charges on Monday over baseless claims she enabled the attack by his supporters that day, called the pardons and commutations “an outrageous insult to our justice system and the heroes who suffered physical scars and emotional trauma as they protected the Capitol, the Congress and the Constitution."

Former Metropolitan Police Officer Michael Fanone, who lost consciousness and suffered a heart attack after a rioter shocked him with a stun gun, told The Associated Press he has spent the past four years worried about his safety and the well-being of his family. Pardoning his assailants only compounds his fears, he said.

"MAGA Republicans in Congress have taken a stand against law enforcement, against the will of the voters, and against the Constitution," Fanone said in a statement. "They voted with the violent insurrectionists, then tried to discredit the heroic police officers who defended the government, and now they support pardons for the criminals who attacked American democracy."

A former Capitol police officer who also fought the mob that day, Sgt. Aquilino Gonell, also said in a statement that “pardoning insurrectionists would only be a further desecration of the officers who died and reject accountability for the atrocities of that day.”

Police were dragged into the crowd and beaten. Rioters used makeshift weapons to attack police, including flagpoles, a crutch and a hockey stick. Investigators documented a number of firearms in the crowd, along with knives, a pitchfork, a tomahawk ax, brass knuckle gloves and other weapons. Officers have described in testimony fearing for their lives as members of the mob hurled insults and obscenities at them.

Two police officers killed themselves in the days after the attack and another, Capitol Police Officer Brian Sicknick, died of multiple strokes hours after being violently attacked by the mob. Two additional police officers killed themselves in July 2021. 

Spectrum News’ Reuben Jones and the Associated Press contributed to this report.