A year later, some Jan. 6 rioters are emboldened by Trump's pardons
On the first day of his second term in office, President Donald Trump pardoned more than 1,500 individuals who were charged with or convicted of crimes related to the Jan. 6, 2021, attack on the U.S. Capitol and issued blanket pardons for anyone at or near the Capitol that day.
Included in the pardons were more than 600 rioters convicted of assaulting, resisting or interfering with law enforcement that day. When signing the order, Trump referred to the defendants as "hostages".
On the five-year anniversary of Jan. 6, some of those rioters returned to the Capitol. Among them was Jacob Lang, a man charged with assaulting police officers at the riot.
Speaking to ABC News' Jay O'Brien, Lang was unapologetic about his role in the violence, calling Capitol Police "redcoats" and "traitors to the Constitution."
Since his pardon, Lang has been active in conservative politics, launching a run for the Senate in Florida and leading an anti-immigration march in Minneapolis last weekend.
The pardons hit hard for Capitol Police officers who faced a crisis of morale and mental health after the attack. According to Reuters, at least four police officers who responded to the riot later died by suicide.
Former Capitol Police officer Winston Pingeon told ABC News that with the pardons "what little shred of justice and accountability there was is long gone. The pardons completely erased that."
But for some of those pardoned, clemency wasn't enough. Lang told ABC News that his next hope was that the judges and prosecutors who oversaw his case would be jailed.
He said "the next biggest moments of the healing proces. ... are when [Jan. 6 rioters] are elected officials, right? When our traitor, treasonous prosecutors, judges, [Jan. 6 Select Committee members], when they occupy the same cells we did."
At least 15 of the Jan. 6 prosecutors were fired after Trump took office. Others like Brendan Ballou resigned shortly after Trump was sworn in. He describes the pardons as "a get-out-of-jail-free card" and that he is "worried about the message that the pardon has sent" to rioters, especially those who engaged in violence.
"I think it says that if you are sufficiently loyal to this president that you can enact violence in his name without consequence," Ballou added.
According to the nonprofit Citizens for Responsible Ethics in Washington, at least 33 of those pardoned by Trump have gone on to be charged with or convicted of other crimes -- running the gamut from DUIs to terroristic threats against House Majority Leader Hakeem Jeffries.
One rioter, Matthew Huttle, was shot to death by police during a traffic stop in which he told an officer that he "[couldn't] afford to get into trouble right now," given his recent pardon, prosecutors in Indiana said.
Two of the rioters chose to decline their pardons. One, Pamela Hemphill, testified at a hearing at the U.S. Capitol to mark the fifth anniversary of the attack. Speaking to members of the Capitol Police, she pled for forgiveness saying, "I am truly sorry from the bottom of my heart for being part of the mob that put you and so many officers in danger."
Editor's note: An earlier version of this story incorrectly reported that Jason Riddle, who rejected a pardon for his Jan. 6 conviction, was deceased.
