US President Donald Trump defends his decision to pardon 6 January Capitol Hill riot perpetrators

The newly sworn-in US President Donald Trump defended his decision to grant clemency to people convicted of assaulting police officers during the 2021 attack on the Capitol.

Trump suggested there could be a place in US politics for the far-right ‘Proud Boys’ and ‘Oath Keepers’ groups, who organised and rallied supporters to violence in the chaos that unravelled on 6 January. The leaders of both groups were convicted of seditious conspiracy against the United States.

Trump used his first hours back in the Oval Office at the White House to erase the records of more than 200 people who pleaded guilty to assaulting officers at the Capitol siege four years ago, and freed from prison approximately 1,500 people convicted of trying to overthrow the government.

The insurrection was sparked after he refused to accept his loss in the 2020 presidential election to Democrat Joe Biden. At least 140 officers were injured – many beaten, bloodied and crushed by the crowd – when Trump supporters tried to overturn his electoral defeat.

Before the Capitol attack, the Proud Boys were a group best known for street fights with anti-fascist activists. The group’s former top leader. Enrique Tarrio, and three of his lieutenants were convicted of seditious conspiracy for a violent plot to stop the peaceful transfer of presidential power from Trump to Biden.

Tarrio was slapped with a 22-year sentence, the longest of all the Capitol riot cases, before Trump pardoned him on Monday.

When pressed by a reporter about the Proud Boys and Oath Keepers, and whether there was a place for them in politics, the 47th US President said “well, we have to see. They’ve been given a pardon. I thought their sentences were ridiculous and excessive.”

Trump continued saying “these were people that actually love our country”, saying that some of members of the groups were given “many years in jail” for acts as little as taking a down “an anti-American flag”.

Trump’s Vice President JD Vance previously said that those who committed violence on 6 January should “obviously not be pardoned”. Responding to a reporter asking him why he thought his vice president was wrong, Trump said “they’ve served years in jail, and murderers don’t even go to jail in this country.”

Trump suggested that his decision was fair, saying the almost 1,500 people who were given full pardons, did not do enough to warrant the sentences they were given.

He stressed that the 16 commutations he issued to some of the perpetrators was because they “could have done things that were not acceptable for a full pardon”.

Trump noted that he won the 2024 election against former US Vice President Kamala Harris “in a landslide” because the American public are tired of “one sided, horrible people”.

The new US president, who is serving his second and final term in office, says his presidency is going to be one that “shocks people”, insisting his policy will always put ‘America First’ and restore the country to its former glory, tarnished by the four year Biden administration.