SUBSCRIBE TO OUR FREE NEWSLETTER
Daily news & progressive opinion—funded by the people, not the corporations—delivered straight to your inbox.
5
#000000
#FFFFFF
5
#000000
#FFFFFF
insurrection
Nearly 100 Trump-Pardoned MAGA Insurrectionists Have Been Charged With Other Crimes: Analysis
Among other things, the pardoned rioters have faced charges related to grand larceny, fraud, child sexual abuse, and plots to assassinate law enforcement officials and politicians.
Jun 04, 2026
On the first day of his second term last year, President Donald Trump delivered a mass pardon to more than 1,500 people who were charged with crimes related to the violent riot at the US Capitol on January 6, 2021.
An analysis published Thursday by Lawfare associate editor Katherine Pompilio finds that at least 97 of these pardoned Trump supporters have been charged with other crimes, including serious alleged offenses such as grand larceny, fraud, and plots to assassinate law enforcement officials and politicians.
The analysis also documents 14 instances of pardoned Capitol rioters being "charged with sex crimes or crimes related to child sexual abuse material (CSAM)," while "at least six" have been charged with domestic violence.
Some of the pardoned rioters have been charged with more minor offenses, including public intoxication, possession of drug paraphernalia, and property damage.
The most notable finding is that at least five of the repeat offenders committed crimes after being freed from prison as a result of Trump's actions, suggesting that his pardon "may have actively facilitated criminal conduct."
The most infamous case involves Andrew Paul Johnson, a Capitol rioter who was freed from prison after receiving the Trump pardon and has since been sentenced to life in prison on charges related to child molestation.
"The criminal conduct for which he was convicted took place both before and after his pardon," the analysis notes.
Other repeat offenders who committed crimes after being freed by Trump were Zachary Alam, who was convicted of felony and grand larceny months after being pardoned, and Ryan Nichols, who was arrest last month for allegedly "threatening a person with a gun in a church parking lot," the analysis finds.
According to a Thursday report from The New York Times, the Lawfare analysis more than doubles the number of documented instances of pardoned rioters who have been charged with crimes beyond January 6-related offenses.
"A previous study of January 6 recidivism found that at least 40 defendants faced other criminal charges, with 12 taking place after Trump's clemency order," reported the Times. "The Lawfare study found 19 criminal cases that occurred after the clemency."
Keep ReadingShow Less
'Filled With Lies': Trump White House Releases False History of Jan. 6
"It is past time for 25th Amendment remedies," said one critic.
Jan 06, 2026
To commemorate the fifth anniversary of the deadly riots incited by President Donald Trump at the US Capitol Building, the Trump White House on Tuesday unveiled a website loaded with false claims about the events that took place on January 6, 2021.
The official White House January 6 website features multiple falsehoods and distortions about the Trump-incited Capitol riots, including brazenly false claims about the Capitol Police "escalating" tensions with rioters by firing "tear gas, flash bangs, and rubber munitions into crowds of peaceful protesters."
In reality, Trump supporters stormed past police barricades that had been set up at the Capitol and then smashed windows to enter the building and illegally disrupt the certification of the 2020 presidential election, which Trump falsely claimed to have won.
The website also blames former Vice President Mike Pence for refusing to go along with Trump's unconstitutional scheme to unilaterally discard certified election results from key swing states, which would have put the election results in the hands of Republican-controlled state legislatures to falsely certify Trump as the winner.
The Trump White House's revisionist history of the riots falsely claims that rioter Ashli Babbitt was "murdered in cold blood" by Capitol Police, when in reality she was shot while trying to break into into the Speaker's Lobby after being warned multiple times by officers to stand back.
The Capitol rioters garner significant praise from the White House website, which falsely portrays them as peaceful demonstrators who fell victim to the actions of Capitol Police and overly zealous Department of Justice (DOJ) prosecutors.
"On his first day back in office, January 20, 2025, President Trump issued sweeping blanket pardons and commutations for nearly 1,600 patriotic Americans prosecuted for their presence at the Capitol—many mere trespassers or peaceful protesters treated as insurrectionists by a weaponized Biden DOJ," the website says.
The blatantly false claims on the website drew a horrified reaction from many critics, including some journalists who were at the Capitol on that day and witnesses the riots firsthand.
"Never forget that Trump attempted a coup to stay in power after losing reelection, ending with the violent insurrection he incited that left 140 cops injured, five dead," wrote HuffPost White House correspondent SV Dáte on X.
"The White House's new January 6 page is filled with lies, misrepresentation, and reality denial," wrote Bellingcat founder Eliot Higgins on Bluesky. "It's a clear attempt to rewrite history and frame Trump in heroic terms."
Author Mike Rothschild accused the White House of engaging in historical revisionism on par with the government depicted in George Orwell's classic novel 1984, arguing that Trump and his underlings of embracing "an alternate reality so hackneyed and obviously fake that it would make Orwell stick his head in a wood chipper."
Victor Ray, a sociologist at the University of Iowa, raised alarms about what the January 6 White House website says about Trump's mental health.
"This is batshit," he wrote. "The White House is doing alternate reality history. It is past time for 25th Amendment remedies."
Matt Gertz, senior fellow at Media Matters for America, reacted to the section of the website blaming Pence by describing it as an ominous sign that a future coup attempt by Trump to illegally remain in power might actually succeed.
"Trump replaced Pence on the ticket with someone he fully expects would carry out this deranged scheme if he has the opportunity, instead betraying the Constitution," he wrote, referring to Vice President JD Vance, who criticized Pence for fulfilling his constitutional duty and certifying the 2020 election results.
Keep ReadingShow Less
Trump Is No King—He's More Dangerous Than That
And yet, as he was elected by the people, we need no revolution to overthrow him. What we must do is reclaim democracy for the common good and put back together what the MAGA movement has smashed.
Jul 04, 2025
Donald Trump seems to think he is a king.
On June 14, I joined with citizens across the country to loudly declare “No Kings!
At the same time, Trump is not a king. For while he inherited great wealth, he did not inherit the political power he now wields with such cruelty and contempt for the law.
Trump, alas, is the elected President of the United States.
Well over 77 million citizens voted for him, after experiencing his Covid response, his two impeachments, his civil and criminal convictions, and his failed administration. After all that, those millions of our fellow citizens elected him to the highest office in the country for a second time.
As we celebrate this July 4, it is important to emphasize the ways that Trump’s presidency stands as an affront and a danger to those core values of the Declaration that have long animated democratic struggles...
Trump is indeed much more dangerous than any monarch, precisely because he was elected after a multi-year campaign (kings do not campaign) that consisted of angry rhetoric and violent incitement and very clear promises to do exactly what he is now doing, a campaign that generated substantial popular support and even enthusiasm. There is something paradoxical about this: claiming to represent “We the People,” Trump is laying waste to the foundations of the very constitutional democracy that authorizes his power—much like dictators of the past, including Mussolini and Hitler, did a century ago, and Viktor Orban and Recep Tayyip Erdoğan do today.
The U.S. was not a constitutional democracy in 1776. But it became one, over time, because of the struggles of social movements that regarded the Declaration of Independence as “a charter of liberty” and sought to make real its promise—to secure human rights for all, and a government legitimated by popular consent. A nation, as Lincoln famously put it, “dedicated to the proposition that all men are created equal,” and challenged to sustain “government of the people, by the people, and for the people.”
As we celebrate this July 4, it is important to emphasize the ways that Trump’s presidency stands as an affront and a danger to those core values of the Declaration that have long animated democratic struggles—which makes it all the more galling that he continues to insist that he, along with his recently reinstated “1776 Commission,” is its chief defender.
The rhetoric of popular revolt or revolution is misleading precisely because Trump is a democratically elected president and is neither a king nor a dictator—at least not yet.
On June 14, I nodded approvingly as I heard fellow demonstrators rightly invoke the liberatory rhetoric of the Declaration’s Preamble. But I blanched when this line was loudly repeated as a call to action: “whenever any Form of Government becomes destructive of these Ends, it is the Right of the People to alter or to abolish it, and to institute new Government, laying its Foundation on such Principles, and organizing its Powers in such Form, as to them shall seem most likely to effect their Safety and Happiness.”
I bow to no one in my opposition to Trump, and I truly want to see him gone as soon as possible. Given his administration’s rapid-fire assaults on liberal democracy, I fully appreciate the mobilizational power of those “No Kings” appeals to the rhetoric of popular revolt. And it must be stated: those who embrace this rhetoric do so only rhetorically; it is not anywhere accompanied by incitements to violence or calls to insurrection.
At the same time, the rhetoric of popular revolt or revolution is misleading precisely because Trump is a democratically elected president and is neither a king nor a dictator—at least not yet. Trump is what historians call a “conservative revolutionary.” Seeking to destroy the progressive achievements of past decades, and to restore a mythic lost “greatness,” it is he who seeks to alter or abolish the current political system, and it is we who must prevent him from succeeding, by defending constitutional democracy, whatever its deficiencies.
Recall that the January 6, 2021 insurrection was justified as a second American Revolution. On that morning, MAGA Congresswoman Lauren Boebert ttweeted “Today is 1776.” Congressman Jody Hice followed a few hours later, tweeting “this is our 1776 moment.” The rallying cry was heard. And, led by Proud Boys and Three Percenters cosplaying the Minutemen of Lexington and Concord, the “patriotic” mob descended upon the Capitol, doing their part to prevent “Biden the Usurper” from becoming president. Days later, the Philadelphia Inquirer profiled Jim Sinclair, a 38-year-old home restoration contractor from Bensalem, Pennsylvania, who traveled to Washington to participate in the “Stop the Steal” march. “Freedom!!!!!!!” Sinclair posted on Facebook. “It’s 1776, the American people have ears and eyes,” he declared. “We will not accept this fraudulent election.” Politico reported that online social media traffic among extremists in the lead-up to the insurrection frequently alluded to the precedent of 1776.
This is the rhetoric of civil war. And it attacks the fundamental premise of our constitutional democracy—the legitimacy of political contestation.
Also recall that the highbrow conservative luminaries from Hillsdale College and the Claremont Institute who comprised Trump’s “1776 Commission” and revere “The Founding Fathers” either directly supported this insurrection or gave it intellectual cover. The “Stop the Steal” movement that powered Trump’s 2024 victory frequently invoked the “spirit of ’76.” Claiming to represent a “resistance” to the supposedly “totalitarian Biden regime,” MAGA ideologues were quite amenable to extra-legal action in the service of “regime change,” in the event that “the Democrat Party” succeeded in 2024. If you doubt this, take a look at Claremont Institute Fellow Kevin Slack’s 2023 book War on the American Republic: How Liberalism Became Despotism, which floats the idea of a new—and very much armed—American Revolution. Discussing the book in The American Mind, a MAGA journal, Claremont fellow Glenn Ellmers dispassionately discusses “Revolutionary Necessity,” quoting Jefferson on “prudence” and gently urging caution because “the regime” would love to crush a revolution, and “one should embark on a revolution only when there is a reasonable expectation, and plan for, a better arrangement.” In other words, you need to really be sure you can succeed before you try to overthrow the “despotism” of liberal democracy.
This is the rhetoric of civil war. And it attacks the fundamental premise of our constitutional democracy—the legitimacy of political contestation. Trump won the 2024 election. And so, instead of taking to the streets—as they might have done had Trump lost—MAGA ideologues, armed with their own revolutionary manifesto, Project 2025, have taken control of the Executive Branch of the federal government. And they are using it to wage war on legal institutions, universities, immigrants both documented and undocumented, sexual minorities, and political critics of all kinds.
This July Fourth, we ought to recall heroes and heroines of the past—Elizabeth Cady Stanton, Frederick Douglass, Eugene V. Debs, Martin Luther King, Jr., and others—who led the fight to realize a robustly democratic vision of the Declaration. And then, using the hard-won civil and political liberties still at our disposal, we ought to rededicate ourselves to winning back political power democratically, so that, in the words of Lincoln, “government of, by, and for the people shall not perish from the earth.” For if the MAGA agenda succeeds, we can say goodbye to civil rights, civil liberties, and democracy itself. It would be a cruel irony indeed if future July 4 celebrations were to become celebrations of the MAGA illiberalism that warms Donald Trump’s shriveled heart.
Keep ReadingShow Less
Most Popular