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(Bloomberg) — Four years after a mob attacked the US Capitol to support Donald Trump’s last-gasp effort to overturn his election loss, the events of Jan. 6, 2021, have evolved into a political and cultural flashpoint — with little lasting damage to the president-elect.

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The attack faced bipartisan condemnation in the immediate aftermath. But as Trump made 2020 election denialism a core part of his post-first term identity, downplaying the severity of the attack and denouncing the prosecutions that followed became a sign of loyalty and helped propel him to a second term.

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As Trump prepares to return to power in two weeks, expectations are high for him to reward that allegiance and fulfill his promises of swift clemency for the 1,000-plus people convicted and hundreds more with pending cases. Any early action on Jan. 6 pardons would set the tone for how he might wield the presidency to reward loyalists and, critics fear, punish opponents.

This year’s Jan. 6 election certification has been designated a “national special security event” to be overseen by the US Secret Service. It’s the first time the vote-counting event has been given this classification, according to the agency, and allows for vast resources from the federal government and state and local partners to be used in the security plan.

Another risk for Monday’s event is heavy weather that’s expected to arrive in Washington overnight. “We’ve got a big snowstorm coming to DC and we encourage all of our colleagues: do not leave town,” House Speaker Mike Johnson said on Fox News’ Sunday Morning Futures. “So whether we’re in a blizzard or not, we are going to be in that chamber making sure this is done.”

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Major General John C. Andonie, commanding general for the Washington, DC National Guard, told reporters Friday that 500 soldiers would be on standby to support the certification. 

President Joe Biden drew fresh criticisms from Trump after he granted Presidential Citizens Medals on Thursday to Liz Cheney and Bennie Thompson, the bipartisan duo who headed a congressional panel investigating the Jan. 6 attack.

Meanwhile, prosecutors and judges in Washington are making a final push to build out the public record of what Attorney General Merrick Garland has said is the largest federal investigation in US history. The US attorney’s office continued to announce arrests in the weeks after the election in November, with a focus on people accused of assaulting police. 

At the same time, a Justice Department special counsel ended his pursuit of the two federal criminal cases against Trump, including one related to the 2020 election. The department has a longstanding policy against prosecuting sitting presidents.

Some judges have criticized the prospect of mass pardons. Others have said that how Trump exercises his power isn’t their business, but that it won’t change their assessment after spending the past four years hearing testimony from police officers and other witnesses who were at the Capitol and poring over videos, documents and other evidence.

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New Precedent

“It was an insurrection. It was a disruption of the lawful functions of government, and it almost worked,” US District Judge Paul Friedman said in court during a Dec. 10 sentencing. Trump “encouraged it and incited it,” the judge said, and members of Congress trying to “rewrite history” are “really disgusting.”

Rizwan Qureshi, a former federal prosecutor, said that mass clemency from Trump for the Jan. 6 attack would set a bad precedent for how Americans think about handling political losses. 

Qureshi was part of the team that prosecuted people swept up in mass arrests during destructive demonstrations during Trump’s first inauguration in 2017. The office dropped the bulk of cases after early trials ended with acquittals.

“Full pardons have the impact of eliminating any of the deterrence” of prosecutions, he said.

Clemency from Trump may take the form of full amnesty or pardons, commutations that cut short sentences or some combination. He has said it will be among his first actions after he’s sworn in on Jan. 20. He’s been non-committal about the scope, focusing his comments on “non-violent” offenders and saying his administration would “look at each individual case.” 

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Senator Adam Schiff, a California Democrat who sat on a House committee that investigated Trump’s role in the Jan. 6 attack, said Trump swiftly “pardoning vast numbers of people involved in that violence” would send “a terrible message” about democracy. “I think it would be a terrible start,” he said on NBC’s Meet the Press.

Among those waiting for any clemency action is Nicole Reffitt, whose husband Guy Reffitt was the first Jan. 6 defendant convicted at trial and is serving an almost seven-year prison sentence. Her husband brought a handgun to the Capitol and was, in the government’s words, “at the front of a pack that charged” police officers. 

Process Uncertainty

“There is anxiety in the Jan. 6 community because of the uncertainty of what the process is even going to look like,” said Nicole Reffitt, who participates in vigils at the local jail in Washington to support Capitol riot defendants and said she wasn’t aware of direct outreach from Trump’s team to families of those convicted.

She said that an intermediary, whom she declined to identify, relayed from the transition that families and defendants should feel “confident and secure.”

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Marina Medvin, an attorney for several Jan. 6 defendants, told Bloomberg she hadn’t received word from Trump’s team. A spokesperson for the presidential transition declined to comment.

Trials have revealed that people brought guns, knives, chemical sprays, tasers and an array of makeshift weapons to the Capitol.

As of Dec. 6, about 1,572 people had been charged in connection with the attack, according to the US attorney’s office in Washington. Almost 600 were charged with assaulting or impeding law enforcement, and of those cases, 171 involved weapons or injuring officers. 

Almost 1,000 defendants have pleaded guilty to crimes and more than 200 were found guilty at trial. Of those convicted, 645 were sentenced to time behind bars, with terms ranging from a few weeks to decades. 

Incarceration Figures

A US attorney’s office spokesperson declined to comment on the prospects for clemency and to share details on how many people were incarcerated — either in pre-trial detention or serving sentences — at the end of 2024. 

Paula Calloway, a conservative advocate who has been coordinating support for defendants, said she’s aware of at least 236 people serving prison sentences in federal facilities or awaiting trial at the Washington, DC jail.

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Calloway, who said she was at the Capitol on Jan. 6 but didn’t go inside and wasn’t charged, said she’d be disappointed if Trump doesn’t sign complete pardons for everyone, regardless of the crimes they were accused of committing.

“They all just need to go home,” she said, adding that she didn’t trust evidence from the government.

With a stack of first-100-days promises in the offing, Trump may have bigger priorities than clemency, such as securing the border, said Republican strategist Lisa Camooso Miller. He’s still likely to maintain that the Biden administration has overly politicized the Jan. 6 investigations.

Trump’s decisive election victory over Vice President Kamala Harris also “takes away from some of the oxygen and the energy around that dissatisfaction” of Jan. 6, she said.

—With assistance from María Paula Mijares Torres.

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