Picture by TapTheForwardAssist, CC BY-SA 4.0. Through Wikimedia Commons.
A few of them obtained proper again to work.
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When Ryan Nichols stood exterior the U.S. Capitol in January 2021 with a bullhorn and a crowbar, he didn’t hassle to cover his intentions. “It’s going to be violent,” he declared on video, in keeping with court docket information, after which made good on it, assaulting cops and urging the mob to breach the constructing.
He was ultimately convicted and sentenced to greater than 5 years in federal jail. However that was earlier than Donald Trump gave him a pardon.
Final Sunday, Nichols was arrested exterior a church in Harleton, Texas, on fees of lethal conduct and harassment after allegedly cornering a person who was holding a Bible, lifting his shirt, and inserting his hand on the grip of a firearm till the sufferer mentioned he feared for his life.
In keeping with a brand new report by The Guardian, Nichols is the fifth pardoned January 6 defendant to be accused of a brand new crime since Donald Trump granted sweeping clemency to greater than 1,500 insurrectionists on his first day again in workplace.
In keeping with information compiled by the federal government watchdog Residents for Duty and Ethics in Washington, and detailed in a January 2026 report from Democrats on the Home Judiciary Committee, not less than 33 pardoned rioters have been rearrested, charged, or sentenced for different crimes since January 6, 2021 — 4 of whom allegedly reoffended after receiving their pardons.
Blanket immunity for criminals
The others aren’t any higher. Christopher Moynihan, one of many first rioters to breach police barricades on January 6, was charged in October 2025 with a felony depend of creating a terroristic menace after allegedly sending messages saying he deliberate to kill Home Minority Chief Hakeem Jeffries at a scheduled public look in New York Metropolis. The identical Jeffries, thoughts you, who’s at all times butting heads with Trump to protect a measure of sanity on this administration.
Trump branded his government order a “great point for humanity,” and his response to this rising sample is about what you’d anticipate from the person.
When requested in regards to the Moynihan arrest, he shrugged it off and mentioned: “No, you have got 1000’s of people that we’re coping with and if one goes haywire.” (per USA As we speak)
The broader numbers inform the identical story. The Home Judiciary Democrats’ report notes that not less than 159 of these pardoned had prior legal information earlier than January 6, together with one particular person — Peter Schwartz — with 38 prior convictions stretching again to 1991, together with assault with a lethal weapon and home violence.
There was a time we might’ve thought of that the type of scandal that ends a presidency. However now that we all know Trump is providing his yes-men blanket immunity to do his bidding, the one actual shock is that anybody’s stunned.