President Trump forgave the rioters on January 6, many of those who violently attacked the police. The rioters were sentenced through the US courts with normal procedure. But the pellets undermine these judicial decisions and the concept of the rule of law in the United States.
Paula Reid, leader in CNN.
Mary McCord, Executive Director of the Institute of Constitutional Defense and Protection and Visiting Law Professor at the Law Center of the University of Georgetown.
Part I
Meghna Chakrabarti: hours after being released from the federal criminal last week, Enrique Tarrio asked the show of Alex Jones. Jones is a right animator and a conspiracy theorist who said that the United States government had organized the attacks of September 11, Oklahoma City’s attack and the 1969 TouchDown moon.
Jones also brutally transmitted members of the Circle of relatives of young people killed in the shooting of Sandy Hook, Connecticut. He discovered guilty for this. And a Pass trial ordered him to pay more than one billion dollars in damage to Sandy Hook’s parents. Jones said bankruptcy rather. Now, Alex Jones also partially financed Donald Trump’s meetings, who took his position in Washington, D. C. , on January 6, 2021.
He supported efforts to overturn the 2020 election and spoke to Trump supporters on Jan. 6 before this crowd was attacked by the U. S. Capitol. Jones called it, quote, a turning point in American history, the best quote. Now, why me the story of Alex Jones? Well, because it has to do with Enrique Tarrio.
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He is the leader of the militia organization, the proud children. And one of his links to Jones is Jan. 6. Tarrio had served 22 years in Criminal after being discovered that he blamed the seditious conspiracy opposed to the United States for his involvement in the attack on the American Capitol. And this is what Tarrio said about Jones.
ENRIQUE TARRIO: Success is going to be retribution, you know, we got to do everything in our power to make sure that the next four years sets us up for the next hundred years.
CHAKRABARTI: Tarrio’s 22 years was the longest sentence of almost 1,600 people who were federally charged in connection to January 6th. Tarrio wasn’t physically at the Capitol on the day of the attack.
In fact, he had been arrested two days earlier in a separate case and ordered out of Washington, D.C. However, he was charged with organizing and directing the Proud Boys attack on Congress. And he’d been serving that sentence until this month, when he was given a full pardon by President Donald Trump.
Then, he called Alex Jones.
TARRIO: I’m happy that the president’s focusing not on retribution and focusing on success, but I will tell you, I’m not going to play by those rules. The people who did this, they need to feel the heat. They need to be put behind bars. They pardoned the J6 committee, fine. In this country, our case proves that you could be imprisoned for anything.
Chakrabarti: The Jan. 6 investigation was the largest conducted through the Department of Justice in U. S. history. On the first day of his presidency, President Trump disappointed this by issuing pardons or switches for more than 1,500 people charged in the Jan. 6 attack. Trump signed the order in his own old black Sharpie.
Donald Trump: So it’s big. Anything you need about this?We hope you pass out tonight, frankly.
CHAKRABARTI: On January 6, 2021, rioters stormed the U.S. Capitol, and they damaged the building, defecated in its halls. They threatened the U.S. government and the people who serve it, and they temporarily stopped the constitutionally mandated electoral vote confirmation process.
Many have also violently attacked police officers. Trump’s general forgives do not distinguish between those who have done and have not committed physical violence to the Capitol. Even if some 140 police officers were brutally attacked that day. And some 172 defendants begged the fault of having attacked the application of the laws.
The officer [Daniel] Hodges tried to maintain the line on January 6 at the Capitol. He still postulates for the D. C. Metropolitan Police Service, and spoke with the newcomers after Trump has forgiven the other people who attacked him.
DANIEL HODGES: They called me a traitor, telling me to remember my oath.
I hit myself, I crushed, I kicked, I punched, I went around. Someone reached for my visor, tried to touch me.
And all these people were just pardoned by Donald Trump, who says that they were the real victims. That they were the patriots. I don’t understand how anyone can believe that.
Chakrabarti: Trump’s actions, although not surprising, are not in line with what his own vice president said in the days before Trump’s possession.
About two weeks ago, in mid -January, when the elected vice president J. D. Vance in Fox News. And it seemed to recommend that other people who committed violence would not be forgiven.
JD Vance: I think it’s very simple. Look, if you are protesting peacefully on January 6, and the Department of Justice of Merrick Garland has been treated as a member of a gang, they forgive him.
If he committed violence that day, he doesn’t forgive him. And there is a little gray domain there.
CHAKRABARTI: Clearly, that’s not what Trump did. He issued that blanket pardon. Now, the mass pardons were not universally welcomed by Republicans. A few dared to speak out. Here’s Republican Senator Lindsey Graham of South Carolina.
He was on NBC’s Meet the Press this weekend.
LINDSEY GRAHAM: I fear that you will get more violence. Pardoning the people who went into the Capitol and beat up a police officer violently I think was a mistake, because it seems to suggest that’s an okay thing to do.
Chakrabarti: Jackson Reffitt told ABC News he’s worried.
His father was sentenced to seven years in prison for the January 6th attack. And that happened after Jackson turned his own father into authorities. Now, his dad is free.
Jackson Reffitt: I love him and looked after entering prison, however, all he has is more radicalized. He wants no more touch with those excessive right militias that validate him.
He wants a resource and this forgiveness will not. This will validate and justify all the measures you have taken before this point. And this is what scares me, who knows what this validation can carry.
Chakrabarti: another man, Stewart Rhodes, on the most sensible Trump switching list.
He is the founder and leader of the extreme right -wing group, The Oath Keepers. It has served for 18 years in a seditious plot opposite to the United States in relation to the attack on January 6. After being released this month from Maryland. Jail, Rhodes waited outside the D. C. For other defendants, and then spoke with the media.
STEWART RHODES: I think it’s a good day for America that this is being, all the wrongs are being undone. So, none of these people should have been here in the first place. None of them were ever tried in a fair … trial.
Reporter: And what about the Capitol Police officers who were injured in this area?
Rhodes: What do you mean, what am I saying?
REPORTER: I mean, there are some Capitol Police officers who were seriously injured in this.
Rhodes: Okay, so?
REPORTER: And they’re concerned that people are not going to have to face any charges for.
Rhodes: No, they faced charges, but as I said, you are supposed to be without guilt until you have been guilty, until you received a trial just before a fair jury that this will keep the government to a rule for moderate doubt, before a trial passing on who is also fair.
He will keep the government on its burden of evidence to turn over exculpatory evidence and to give testimony. Until he gets that fair trial, he is supposed to be presumed guilty.
CHAKRABARTI: After his release, Rhodes also paid a visit to the U.S. Capitol, the very building he had attacked four years earlier, apparently to advocate for the release of another Oath Keeper.
A judge has since barred Rhodes from entering the Capitol or Washington, D.C. without court permission. Now, we wanted to go over that history because it has been four years since that unique and terrible day in U.S. history, January 6th, 2021.
And with those general forgives for other people who have tried to interrupt the non -violent movement of power, anything that has been happening for centuries in this country, and have tried to do so, in many cases, violently, which calls the religion of This country in this country in the total concept of the rule of law.
So, that is what we are going through to communicate today. But let’s start with some main points about that forgiveness, or forgiveness, and we are going on to Paula Reid. It is the leading legal correspondent of CNN. Paula, it is wonderful to see you again.
Paula Reid: And thank you very much for inviting me.
Chakrabarti: And thanks for listening through that story that we feel very firmly that we are looking for them to be reduced.
I mean, with this context in mind, spend a minute to give us more details. I said pellets and switches, but one of those things was incredibly. What happened?
REID: Yeah, that’s right. Look, one swoop of a pen, he just ended all of the approximately 1,600 cases, stemming from January 6th, in three different ways.
Most of the people, the overwhelming majority of people, who’d been convicted, received pardons. 14 people were selected for commutations. That means their sentence is wiped out, they can walk out of jail, but they still have that conviction. But there’s going to be a process to review those commutations, and some of those 14 people could very well also receive a pardon.
And the last organization was other people whose instances are still pending. These instances will be rejected. But what was promised to us was so that this nuanced, violent non -violent versus approach. But it was transparent in recent months of informing and talking to Trump’s advisors who would probably be much broader. Because they decided to do it the first day, and they were resistant to any type of process, you know, the individual case, through the evaluation case, would take time.
CHAKRABARTI: Was it just his advisors that were resistant to the process or President Trump himself as well?
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Reid: Trump had sworn to do it the first day. So, his advisors guilty for understanding, that’s fine, how do we do that? All they said is that we are not going to make a base on a case basis. It will not be the same old process.
And I said, okay, well, how are they going to make that distinction, that Trump is pointing out, what does he have to do? Vance, even the president of the House of Representatives said: “You will distinguish between violent and non -violent criminals. ” Because it is a very violent fact, and if a base is not made on a case basis, it is difficult to notice the difference.
Because even if you said that everyone accused of assault will be pardoned. Well, it is a very wide variety of driving that is billed under aggression. In addition, he has other people such as Enrique Tarrio, to whom he has referred, who has not yet moved on to the violence that directed him from afar and also won one of the maximum serious sanctions.
Therefore, it was transparent that I was going to take a lot of work. There are many nuances, if you need to analyze the violent to non -violent. But Trump sought to send a message. And he just said, you know what, let’s do it that way. So anything much broader than he had pointed out.
Part II
CHAKRABARTI: Today, we are talking about the very concept of the rule of law in the United States and what President Donald Trump’s blanket pardons of all the people charged and convicted or who pleaded guilty, in relation to their participation in the January 6, 2021 riots on the Capitol, what those blanket pardons say about the very concept of the rule of law in this country.
I’m joined today through Paula Reid. She’s CNN’s leader legal correspondent. And before we pass any further, I just need to right kind anything that I said a little bit earlier. I had discussed that the leader of the Oath Keepers, Stewart Rhodes, had been made up our minds through a pass judgement on that he needed permission to input the Capitol or Washington, D. C.
Well, it turns out that yesterday, this requirement was revoked through another judge, so you no longer want to allow entering the rooms or entering the rooms of the congress or entering the city of Washington, D. C. Laws.
He is former Capitol Police Officer Harry Dunn. He at the site of the attack on Jan. 6, 2021. Now Dunn had no luck for his purposes last year. He lost the Democratic Congressional primary in Maryland’s 3rd District. And that, or just last week, expressed his deep frustration with the pardons.
Harry Dunn: The Republican party has affirmed that it is the law and order. However, many legislators have silenced and refused to retreat in opposition to Donald Trump’s movements, make it incredibly difficult to take this statement seriously.
CHAKRABARTI: Well, here’s President Trump himself and he was on Fox News with Sean Hannity, and Hannity asked him why he had pardoned rioters that were violently attacking or had been violently attacking the police.
TRUMP: It would be very, very cumbersome to go and look, you know how many people we’re talking about? 1,500 people, almost all of them are, should not have been, this should not have happened. And the other thing is this. Some of those people with the police troop, but they were very minor incidents, okay? You know, they get built up by that, a couple of fake guys that are on CNN all the time.
These were very lower incidents, and it is about time. You have murderers in Philadelphia, you have murderers in Los Angeles who don’t even have time. They don’t even choose them and know they are there to be collected. Then they go to television and act rather than you about this or that.
You had 1,500 people that suffered. That’s a lot of people.
Chakrabarti: President Donald Trump in Fox News with Sean Hannity. I take Mary McCord to verbal exchange now. She is executive director of the Institute of Constitutional Defense and Protection. She is also a guest law professor at the Law Center at Georgetown University.
She is an Interim National Security Attorney General at the United States Ministry of Justice from 2016 to 2017 and held other positions in the highest grades of the Federal Judicial System. Mary McCord, welcome to the point.
MARY McCORD: Thanks, Meghna. Nice to be here.
Chakrabarti: Minor incidents? Were these minor incidents in physical attacks on the police on January 6?
McCord: No, they weren’t. And just ask the many judges, the judges of the Federal District Court of the District Court here in the District of Columbia, who have dealt with those only 1,600 cases, have realized that the evidence repeatedly, you know, they’ve noted the violent attacks. In law enforcement officers, the erection of a noose to check to suspend Mike Pence, the destruction of property, etc.
And also did the rest of us. We saw video, we heard audio, we saw social media bragging about it. All of this. So, yes, were there some people who were charged with misdemeanors, whose crimes were not violent, and who entered and trespassed and things like that? Yes, there were some portion of that nearly 1,600 whose crimes were not violent.
And that’s, you know, why I think other people like J. D. Vance say that those are the other people who are probably forgiven, but Trump has been so much more than that, adding forgiveness that you know, more than six hundred people in charge of assisting or resisting or obstructing the police. And 174 of them did it with a fatal or harmful weapon.
We’re talking about swords, axes, hatchets, knives, etc. So no, not a minor incident. 140 officers severely wounded. One. And one who, you know, several who died. Afterwards.
CHAKRABARTI: Afterwards, right, right. So, I’m glad that you pointed out that we all saw it. Because I think, I mean, some people still, either they don’t remember or haven’t seen all the video or the specific actions that you’re talking about. But the point remains, that the attack on January 6th remains one of the best documented, through video and audio and eyewitness accounts, mass crimes in U.S. history.
And yet, President Trump somehow, in the minds and eyes of his voters, moved the crime as he sees it, of the other people who attacked Congress on January 6th and the entire judicial formula of this country. I mean, pay attention to President Trump again. This is his interview with Sean Hannity on Fox News six days ago on Wednesday, Jan. 22.
Only two days after having delivered those pardons, and Sean Hannity asked the president why he had forgiven other people who were cited, convicted or worried about incidents in which they were violent with the police. And this is the first component of what Trump said.
Trump: Several reasons. Number one, they were there for 3 years and a part, for a long time, and in many, solitary isolation, treated as if no one had been treated, treated so much.
They were treated like the worst criminals in history. And you know what they were there for? They were protesting the vote, because they knew the election was rigged, and they were protesting the vote. And that’s, you should be allowed to protest a vote. You should be allowed to. You know, the day, when the day comes.
HANNITY: But you shouldn’t be to invade the Capitol.
Trump: No. Ready? Most of the other people were surely innocent. Okay, forgetting all this, those other people have served horribly, for a long time.
Chakrabarti: Well, then, Mary, first, there were many, many other people in Washington that day, and also that they had approached the Capitol, which protested peacefully. Just for being clear, as far as we know, in him, in him, do you know, only around 1,600 cases that the Department of Justice brought, one of those other people who were outside the Capitol that protested peacefully?
McCord: I don’t. Unless they were to limited areas. As I said, some were not violent, but there were many, many, many who were in fact involved in violence and many who declared themselves guilty.
Chakrabarti: On the right. And in fact, in the rally in advance, no one arrested for their movements, right?
This is absolutely in line with freedom of expression and expression in this country. But Trump here, the president says that other people, other people who accused the Ministry of Justice were the worst treated in the history of the United States. I don’t know what is talking about there, but, I mean, what is your response to the president?
Even that.
McCord: Well, it really turns out that it is something that the president is only updating. He invents because I believe that the component of the explanation why he delivered those pellets was actually his own false story in the 2020 elections that he never abandoned. He never left his statements that it was a manipulated election that Joe Biden did not legitimately won.
And so I think that component of this is justifying those lies. I mean, we just heard this clip saying so much, about those other people had the right to protest against a rigged election. There is no evidence for this. And you know, in terms of treatment, the judges of the District of Columbia. You know, they followed all the proper procedures and trust the constitutional rights of the defendant before them.
Let me tell you what it means. This means making other people have a lawyer. If they can’t, one bears their name. If one can. He is a lawyer for his choice. These lawyers have the option of winning applications before trial, seeking to suppress the evidence, seeking to exclude evidence, seeking to reject the case.
If you think it has been unjustly brought, those judges provide them with what is called due process, what is that process, right? To bring applications, to have a defense. Those who sought to supply guilt read their rights. They renounce those rights. He begged guilt, accepted the facts that would be proposed, which were proposed through prosecutors. Due to a plea of blaming the prosecutor, he says that if this case will pass to the trial, here are the facts that the pass would prove.
And the Pass trial looks at each defendant and says: they agree that, you know, with those facts. And those are volunteers to blame the pleas that more than a thousand other people have begged. Those who go to trial, their lawyers can participate in the jurors selection for this trial.
They are capable of defending this judgment. The defendant, if he chooses, may testify at this trial. And the verdict demands a unanimous verdict. Judges then take data before sentencing. And they come with all of this to make their prayer.
And I just have to note that the judges appointed through the Democrats, the Democratic presidents, the Republican presidents, and Donald Trump himself his first term have been uniformly, condemning, criticizing, and denouncing the violence and the seriousness of those crimes denounced what was done there. and indicated that the attempt here not only feared violence, but also to overthrow the effects of the elections.
CHAKRABARTI: I’m so glad you brought that up, Mary, because I wanted to ask this question.
I mean, I perceive a lot of why this goal exists, in particular, you know, among the political types in Washington and in the media, well, Trump probably wouldn’t have had to forgive the other people who violently attacked law enforcement. But it doesn’t distinguish, in a sense, between the two that lack the point, does it?
Because, yes, I mean, physical violence is abhorrent, no matter what, however, so is a kind of political violence, which is also, at least at the same time, abhorrent in this country, which is necessarily what happened on January 6th. So when we have other people who begged for, you know, the fees of trying to overturn the 2020 election and things like that, yet in the media we’re kind of attacked, they shouldn’t have been lost to the other people who violently attacked a police officer?
Do we miss the point?
McCord: I think you’re surely right about that, Meghna, because even for those who weren’t violent, you know, they were prosecuted because they violated legislation, legislation that they put themselves in a position of public protection, the protection of Members of Congress, those who go in and out of Capitol building to do their homework and things like the Constitutionally required Assembly of the two houses of Congress to certify the electoral vote.
And, you know, just to mention the sure things that the trial pass said that the conviction, you know, a trial pass over the trial stated that the court just can’t tolerate the defendant’s shameless attempts and anyone who reads wrong or wrong to distort what happened. It cannot tolerate the concept that those who broke the law on January 6 did nothing wrong or that the people duly condemned with all the promises of the U. S. Constitution, adding the right to approve the trial through the jury In cases of torcio, they are prisoners or political hostages.
And then he declared on January 6, a multitude of other people invaded and occupied the American Capitol the force to interrupt the movement of non -violent force obliged through the Constitution and our republican heritage. It was not patriotism. It was the antithesis of patriotism. Therefore, it is, you know, a Republican judge on the fence for almost 40 years.
And to your point, there really was no reason for any of these pardons. I think people are rationalizing, well, if there were going to be pardons, they certainly shouldn’t apply to the people who, you know, committed acts of violence, but a pardon is an act of mercy that is generally received when a defendant has accepted responsibility, changed their life for the better, maybe served a very long sentence.
The pellets are after the user who has already finished their prayer. And they contributed to the network and have demonstrated, you know, how much they have changed or used when the practices of discovering the penalty have changed radically. Therefore, sanctions, for example, in drug crimes, years ago in the 1980s, were incredibly long.
These prayers have now been reduced, making it unfair to those condemned at the time to fulfill such long prayers. So, they are, therefore, the kind of other people who get pellets or a change, right?A short of the sentence that still maintains the sentence. But those are things that you look at individually.
And the blanket pardon that doesn’t look at the serious of the crime, their remorse or their lack thereof, their actions after January 6th, you know, that is just, doesn’t have any really valid reason, although the pardon power is a power given to the president alone under the U.S. Constitution.
Chakrabarti: Well, I assure you that in the near future, I need to make a show that does, take a very analyzed eye on the whole concept of presidential pardon. We’ll do that a little later.
But I carry your point of view. I mean, a crime committed opposite to the political framework of the United States, to the right, opposed to the country as a whole. Paula Reid, I know that we have compiled it here and I wanted to ask him again, from his point of view, not only as a legal investigator, but also in his contacts with the Ministry of Justice.
I’m thinking back to what Stewart Rhodes, the leader of the Oath Keepers, said in that clip that we played at the top of the show, just after he had been released from prison. His claim was it’s basically in opposition to everything Mary just described, in terms of how the justice system functioned across these 1,500 plus cases.
I mean, Rhodes said he hadn’t gotten a fair trial, that the jury isn’t fair, that the government didn’t stay popular without any reasonable. He said that the judges in those cases were not alone. He even said that the government had not given evidence or, excuse me, defense evidence to defense attorneys.
He also made some, a claim about perjury testimony. I mean, what’s your response to that? Or, you know, contacts that you have within the Justice Department about this wholesale criticism or even just flat-out rejection of the legal system that many of the January 6th pardonees are claiming?
Reid: President Trump looks a lot, right? Everything is unfair. He is a victim. He was an unfair judge. It was an unfair jury. They are prosecutors for political motivation. It is a very similar statement. I mean, you could call if you realize that there were genuine curtain problems, curtain problems.
So here, you know, there is simply no acceptance of duty and an attempt to undermine the legitimacy of the process, not only through it, but also through President Trump. And now we are seeing that the Trump Department of Justice also do that. , or on Monday, we saw that they were beginning to investigate prosecutors in particular who accused the obstruction of justice.
Saying that, you know, this was a waste of resources. Because, as we know, the Supreme Court eventually ruled obstruction of justice could not be charged. Obstruction could not be charged related to January 6th, it’s not what the specific statute was meant for, but this appears to be part of an effort to undermine the entirety of this investigation of this case, undermine the legitimacy to help, you know, push back against some of the criticism Trump has received.
For really just ending all of the cases stemming from January 6th.
Part III
Chakrabarti: Today we are talking about what forgiveness has covered for President Donald Trump of other people who have been accused and declared guilty or have been convicted of crimes similar to January 6 attack against Congress. What this canopy says about that of this nation. Religion in the rule of law.
And I’m well aware that, when he left the White House, President Biden also issued a giant number of Indonesians. So I just need to promise everybody, again, in the future, we’re going to make a show that you look at presidential pardons as a whole. But let’s pay attention to what House Speaker Mike Johnson said about Trump’s resolution to pardon more than 1,500 people.
And he spoke at a week-long press convention.
MIKE JOHNSON: I think what was made clear all along is that peaceful protests and people who engage in that should never be punished. There was a weaponization of the Justice Department. There was a weaponization of the events. You know, the prosecutions that happened after January 6th.
It was a horrible time and a horrible bankruptcy in American history. The president made his decision. I can’t guess them. And yes, you know, it’s a little bit of my philosophy, my worldview. We in redemption. We at the time opportunities. If you could, you would say that those other people didn’t pay a hefty penalty after they were incarcerated and this is all based on you.
But the president made a decision. We are moving forward. There are greater days ahead of us. This is what fascinates us. We do not look again. We are ahead.
Chakrabarti: This is how President Mike Johnson, Paula, on this declaration of armaments of the Ministry of Justice, you know, this greater investigation that the Ministry of Justice has undertaken in the history of the states -UNIS. I mean, I think what are the consequences of the positions within the Ministry of Justice? I mean, how the hundreds, even thousands of other people who worked in those cases, answer that?
REID: Well, it’s of course demoralizing. Because this was a massive case that was supported by videos and pictures, I mean thousands, thousands and thousands of pieces of evidence that really make it hard to doubt that this happened or that certain individuals engaged in certain conduct.
But this is part of a larger war attacking the integrity of the Justice Department, something Trump has been doing for a really long time, his supporters are doing as well. I think what’s a little bit different here is the pardoning of people who committed violence, arguably in Trump’s name. That sends a chilling effect because it can send a message of, well, if you commit violence in my name, I’ve got your back.
And that is incredibly worrying, because you also have a president whose strength and immunity has just expanded through the Supreme Court. The Supreme Court has given an absolute immunity for anything that can be a citation and an official act. , I think that many of those decisions and many of those occasions are deeply, deeply about other people in the Department of Justice.
Chakrabarti: I see reports that recommend that many other people leave the government in the Ministry of Justice. Have you noticed something similar?
REID: So certainly, people have left. Some of that is common in the transition. Some people have also done the Trump administration once, not in the mood to do it twice.
And certainly, after Trump’s re -election, I know that I heard a source that is executed in a legal body of workers’ agency, particularly leaves other government people and puts them into personal practice, and said that they had just been flooded. With calls. Therefore, other people are not only demoralized, I think that other people are also afraid, but there are also other people who, I think, need to stay and continue doing their job.
But Trump’s new Justice Department officials, have such distrust and deeply hate career officials, that is, why did we see that they were discarding several career officials who worked on the special counsel survey in violation of public service. Protections. There is a deep distrust there.
CHAKRABARTI: Oh, I see what you’re talking about, that prosecutors who worked on Trump investigations have been just recently fired, more than a dozen.
Reid: career prosecutors.
Chakrabarti: career prosecutors. Alright. Then, recently arrived. Alright. Let’s pay attention to what President Donald Trump himself said about the movements he has undertaken in those massive covered forgives.
Once again, he spoke at length to Sean Hannity on Fox News. And here’s another part of his answer when Hannity asked him why he had pardoned the violent rioters.
Trump: And what do you know? These people, and I do not say in all cases, but there is a lot of patriotism with those people. A lot of patriotism.
You know, they made a recording, and you know, they asked me if I would make the voice off and I did, you know, it is the number one sale. What do you call it today, album, song, whatever –
Hannity: CD?
Trump: What you call. You do not know. It adjustments each and each year, right? But it the number one sales song, number one on Billboard, number one on each and eachthing, on each and eachthing, for so long.
People get it. They wanted to see those people released.
Hannity: Americans realize. You told them what you would do.
Chakrabarti: This is President Donald Trump in Fox News with Sean Hannity. And along the way, a song that other people jailed for their attack on Congress, I think I understood it as the national anthem.
Donald Trump used that on the campaign trail. Now here once again is Officer Danny Hodges with the D.C. Metropolitan Police Department. You heard him earlier, because he was quite emotionally troubled by the fact that the people who physically attacked him on January 6th had been just pardoned.
He told reporters at a press convention last week that he was still in paintings and that he had really painted the inauguration of President Donald Trump this month.
Hodges: It’s a little surreal on opening day, with all those other people dressed in Maga hats. They saw me and saw my uniform. They identified who iarray
They thanked me for my service. And that reminded me of January 6, 2021, because that morning, I was also thanked for my service. And then they went into the ellipse and listened to Donald Trump speak. And he told them they had to fight, then he sent them to the Capitol. And once they went to the Capitol, they didn’t thank me anymore.
Chakrabarti: D. C. Danny Hodges Metropolitan Police officer. So, Mary, you know, in the list of one hundred consultations that other people who want to naturalize the citizens of the United States. There is a consultation that says: What is the rule of law? And the answer is very, very simple. The answer is that no one is above the law.
I mean, how comprehensive do you say this concept is how the American judicial formula is meant to work?
McCord: It’s in the heart. And I’m going to elaborate and give you some more problems that no one is above the law, however, that’s how you sum it up. I would describe it in 4 ways. It is a formula of legislation that governs. This means that the other people and the government have agreed to respect. This is because there is transparency in the enactment and application of this law.
So, people, so that there is predictability and there is stability. There is a daily rights formula and work that are fair and maintain the rights of people. And there are, in this formula, there are impartial, competent and independent judges, right? All this comes in combination to lead what you just said.
No one is above this, the governed or the government. And that’s what, you know, this type of blanket pardon really undermines that. It’s also why the Supreme court’s immunity decision really undermined that rule of law, because it does give the president, by virtue of his office, absolute immunity for official acts, which include pardons.
And then the alleged immunity for things that are undoubtedly, you know, within the external limits of the official acts, which is anything that we do not know precisely what are the parameters of this. And it is only opening a type of valve to the abuse of the force in a way that is absolutely incompatible with the independent club in the rule of law.
Chakrabarti: Paula, did you answer that or did you go up to that?
REID: Yeah. And again, I think you have to take the pardons in combination with what the Supreme Court says as we look forward to the next four years. I mean, President Trump, his advisors, they’re coming into the White House, and they’ll tell me, like, they have more experience now.
They are more complicated by consulting to achieve their goals. But then he had this upper part and the extended force he gave him through the Supreme Court. And he sent this dog to whistle, really, his followers. That if you do violence in my name, it supports you. All those things in combination are deeply worrisome.
CHAKRABARTI: Well, actually that makes me wonder, Mary, and I’ll turn this one back to you. The sort of wholesale criticism, or doubt that President Trump and many of his supporters now have about the justice, U.S. justice system.
Can we say that essentially, it could potentially be a mirror image of the kinds of criticisms and doubts that other people have had about the justice system. I mean, you know, there’s long been concern about racial bias in the justice system, about wrongful convictions about, you know, judge shopping, jury shopping. You know the list better than I do.
Is this simply the sort of natural continual evolution that we’ve had as Americans when it comes to maybe not our complete trust in how the rule of law functions in practice in U.S. courts?
McCord: I think the difference is that those criticisms, and many are very legitimate. You know, me and others, you know, we have worked to provide complex instances and policies that will reform some of the formula problems, especially as you have indicated, with respect to racial biases within the formula and things like that.
The treatment of people who are too poor to pay bail, those kinds of things, which I would say is not the bail issues, not such an issue in the federal system. Because someone who can’t afford to pay bail cannot be detained, simply because they can’t afford it. But many states still have that bail system that leaves people incarcerated for long periods of time, before they even get a trial.
Therefore, there are valid criticisms, and there is a lot of room for reform. I would say the differences; These criticisms and attacks are well-founded. They are data-driven. There’s the explanation as to why for literally things, it can involve genuine biases and genuine constitutional violations, such as the detention of other people who are too deficient to pay the deposit. When someone with cash to pay a deposit would be released, right?
They can, those things have a basis. What Donald Trump and his supporters, including those pardoned, most of them, I’m not going to say every one of them, because I understand there’s at least one person who has refused the pardon.
But they only believe from a total fabric, a false story about what happened on January 6. And we have heard it in his program, repeated through the president, repeated through some of those forgiven people. And that is the difference. It is only a lie that extends now, because, you know, since January 6, 2021.
Actually before that, before the 2020 elections, Donald Trump had already begun to say that if he did not win, because there is a manipulated formula and a fraud in the elections. And 65 judicial instances said there is no evidence of fraud giant enough to replace the final results of the choice.
They rejected that, Republicans, Democratic judges, et cetera. So I think we have to keep in mind, like we cannot capitulate to a false narrative as support for these attacks on the justice system.
Chakrabarti: Well, you know, I am thinking about how on the tape we have played from the Republican legislators, even those who go so far as to say that they did not agree with the resolution of President Trump to forgive the people who had been convicted for violent attacks opposed to the application of the law.
Their comments imply a “but” or a “but. ” And then they compare it to President Biden’s actions. For example, here’s Sen. Markwayne Mullen, a Republican from Oklahoma. And on Jan. 21, he in CNN. et said he didn’t necessarily agree with Trump’s resolution to pardon all rioters.
But then he said he believes that any president has the right to issue pardons.
Markwayne Mullen: I have my unpacious emotions in this regard, however, other American people have selected to move forward. And President Trump is his prerogative to do so. He did not hide the fact that he would forgive on January 6, who incorrectly embedded through the Department of Justice to perceive what he is saying about violent crime.
However, it is still the president’s prerogative, as was the prerogative of Joe Biden to release the 37 murders or travel his sentences. It is the president’s prerogative. The authority.
And other American people have selected to put President Trump in an overwhelming support.
Chakrabarti: He is Senator Markwayne Mullen de Oklahoma. Paula, what do you think?
Reid: Well, here is the challenge of the strength of presidential forgiveness, unlike some of the other Trump movements, it is absolutely, and it is vast, but it is precisely what he said he would do.
GOOD. He and Vance and the speaker trust other people that violent criminals would not be forgiven. And that is precisely what he did. So I don’t think we can leave it “but Joe Biden”, his departure. But former President Biden gave them political discussion points. When he said several times that he would not forgive his son Hunter, then he would forgive him to change a prayer or do anything else.
And then pardoning many members of his family. I mean, legally it doesn’t make a difference. Trump had the power; Biden had the power. But politically, they use a lot of the moves that former President Biden made to justify their own more broad pardons. Even back two months ago, when I was talking to the Trump advisors about how they would do this.
And I said, look, it seems that it will be quite wide. Every time I would, however, Hunter Biden, didn’t he see what he just did with Hunter Biden? It is as if they had given them a political license to do what they searched here. Again, legally, it does not make the difference, but politically, the movements that Joe Biden has made to justify have been captured.
You know, doing what they said they would.
Chakrabarti: Ouais. eh Well, Paula Reid, CNN lead correspondent. Thank you, Paula, for joining us as always.
Reid: Thank you.
Chakrabarti: Mary, I need to ask you the last question. Because to me, it turns out that trust in the law is one of the key things that holds a democracy together, right?
Because we agree as a nation that we are going to abide by this broader system that’s supposed to be equally applied to all of us. If that belief is frayed, what does that say? We just, I’m sorry, we’ve only got about 30 seconds left, Mary, but what does that say about our belief in the health or the legitimacy of our own democracy?
McCORD: Well, it raises a very dangerous prospect, right? Where are we going from here? And I just would like to close with a quote from one of the district court judges who then had to rule on a motion to dismiss one of the pending cases after the pardons. And you know, she said, no national injustice occurred here.
No national reconciliation procedure can begin when the deficient losers whose favored candidate loses an election glorifies themselves to disrupt the procedures mandated through the Constitution in Congress and do so with impunity. This only raises the damaging specter of lawless long-term conduct through other deficient losers and undermines the rule of law.
This program broadcast on January 28, 2025.
Claire Donly Producer, in Pointclaire Donly, is a producer.
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Meghna Chakrabarti Host, On PointMeghna Chakrabarti is the host of On Point.
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