Trump should pardon rioters — and ask their forgiveness
Rioters loyal to President Donald Trump rally at the U.S. Capitol in Washington, Jan. 6, 2021. Credit: AP/Jose Luis Magana
Donald Trump has long promised that once he returned to the presidency, he will pardon people convicted of crimes in the Jan. 6, 2021, Capitol riot.
This is a promise worth keeping — but not for the reasons he has said. And those who attacked police officers must not be let off the hook.
Still, in the political world, Trump probably owes it to the MAGA loyalists who were locked up in the service of his lie that the election was "stolen."
But the 47th president-to-be should also wrap this gift in an apology to everyone used and victimized in the insurrection.
A cautious little mea culpa could encourage political healing, which Trump has said he wants, in a country that he helped divide.
Honestly explaining the hundreds of pardons — or sentence commutations, if circumstances still demand — would hint that he’s, well, a leader who can drop the political retribution talk for a few minutes.
On that notorious day, Trump wailed battle cries online and in person. He used the spirit of his MAGA loyalists carelessly and fecklessly. He owes them.
Turning publicly gracious and humble at age 78 would be most un-Trumplike. But it would transform his image, at least for a while. He clearly loves defying the expectations of news media and Democrats. And boy, would a sudden bout of decency ever do the trick.
An apology to the faithful wouldn’t cost Trump. He’s due to leave the White House anyway in four years. He can freely admit a "strategic error" in trying to fix an election after he'd lost it, and voters will be unable to punish him.
In issuing pardons, he's free to forgo the usual gaslighting about "Jan. 6 hostages" and "persecution." Doing it the right way would even calm any Republicans who still get nervous about trashing the Constitution. With the right apology, Trump could balance a favor to loyalists with a magnanimous tone not seen in his previous administration.
There's also a matter of equal treatment within the MAGA crowd. If wealthier and more powerful offenders once in Trump’s service such as Paul Manafort, Steve Bannon, Roger Stone and Michael Flynn were thought to merit pardons in varying cases in 2020, volunteers for the cause who took physical risks deserve at least the same treatment.
Pardons — and who gets them — are totally at the discretion of presidents. It would take a big study to assess whether President Joe Biden’s most odiferous choices — a pardon for his convicted son Hunter or commutations for Ponzi schemer Nevin Shapiro and Medicare cheater Meera Sachdeva — are better or worse than Trump’s, which included U.S. military veterans found to have carried out civilian atrocities.
Compare all thatwith the case of Stephen Ayres of Ohio, a cabinet worker caught up in the wild excitement of Jan. 6, who pleaded to one count of disorderly and disruptive conduct in a restricted building. He got 24 months probation and 100 hours of community service.
Ayres testified in 2022 before a select committee of Congress how Trump addressed the Jan. 6 rally: "Basically, the president got everyone riled up, told everyone to head on down, so we were following what he said." Isn’t Ayres owed a humble pardon and apology?
Of course, it’s highly unlikely Trump will go that route. But who knows. Maybe the Ghost of Incitements Past will have a word with him on Christmas Eve in Mar-a-Lago and turn a restored president's spirit around.
Columnist Dan Janison's opinions are his own.
Dan Janison is a member of the Newsday editorial board.
