Editors at National Review Online question President Trump’s approach to those involved in the Jan. 6, 2021, violence in Washington, D.C.
The riot at the Capitol on January 6, 2021, was a national disgrace. It was also a crime. Protesters physically forced Congress to adjourn its constitutionally mandated joint session and evacuate the building. There were assaults on police, theft, and an estimated $2.88 million in damage to property. A dozen police officers spent months recovering from injuries. Protesters who got inside the Capitol chanted death threats aimed at then-vice president Mike Pence. …
… Criminal prosecutions rightly followed, and Trump himself was forced to condemn the riot in a speech on January 7, 2021, calling it an outrageous display of “violence, lawlessness, and mayhem,” and promised, “to those who broke the law: You will pay.” Some 600 participants were charged with assaulting, resisting, or impeding police, including almost 200 rioters who carried weapons and a handful convicted of seditious conspiracy. But the broad net that was cast could not have contrasted more strongly with how Merrick Garland’s Department of Justice and Democratic prosecutors dealt with other riots and political disorders. The Justice Department deployed extraordinary and disproportionate resources to punish the protesters, holding many of them in extended pretrial detention far from home for months. The Supreme Court concluded that one of the major federal statutes deployed against the January 6 defendants had been strained by prosecutors beyond its language. …
… Trump will be able to use the political cover provided by the abusive last-minute pardons handed out by Joe Biden. While Biden’s scandalous pardons will undercut the credibility of Democrats’ criticisms of the January 6 pardons, they don’t justify them.
Societies must resist disorder, riots, political violence, and mob rule. They can and must use the criminal justice system to punish those who engage in such acts. The more dramatic the offense, the greater the case for exemplary punishment. The real scandal is not that violent rioters were charged on this occasion but that they were let off on so many other occasions. Imitating a mistake only compounds the original mistake.
