Former President Donald Trump vowed on Monday that releasing individuals “wrongfully imprisoned” for participating in the January 6th Capitol riot will be among his first acts if reelected as president.
“My first acts as your next President will be to Close the Border, DRILL, BABY, DRILL, and Free the January 6 Hostages being wrongfully imprisoned!” Trump wrote on Truth Social, to the resounding approval of his base.
While restoring American energy independence and securing the southern border have been core elements of the former president’s platform since his 2016 campaign, this is the first time he has explicitly mentioned releasing January 6th defendants as a top priority.
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In the three years since Trump’s “Save America” rally and the ensuing chaos at the Capitol Building, more than 1,358 people have been arrested on charges ranging from misdemeanor vandalism to felony assault, and alleged riot organizers have been convicted for conspiracy. Some 486 defendants have been charged with “assaulting or impeding law enforcement,” most recently a 43-year-old Maryland man who was arrested earlier this month. Nearly 800 of those charged have pled guilty, and 500 have already received prison sentences.
Former President Trump is himself under indictment for allegedly instigating the riot, and Special Counsel Jack Smith is prosecuting an election interference case against him. Despite the common terminology used to describe January 6th, neither Donald Trump nor any of the other defendants have been formally charged with “insurrection.”
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Trump has previously hinted at possible pardons for those arrested in the wake of the riot, telling rally attendees that “if it requires pardons, we will give them pardons, because they are being treated so unfairly” in 2022. Last year, he expanded the scope of his promise, saying he was included to pardon “a large portion” of the prisoners.
At a rally in North Carolina last month, Trump doubled down once again, saying “They’re policemen, they’re firemen, they’re accountants, they’re lawyers in some cases. They’re put in jail for extended periods of time for very long periods of time. They’re hostages.”
Throughout the years, Trump has qualified these statements by rejecting the idea of a blanket pardon because “a couple of them probably…got out of control.”
Trump’s Truth Social post came on the same day that a Republican-led committee in the House of Representatives released its report on the investigative work of the Democrat-led January 6th Select Committee. According to the report, four Trump administration staffers debunked the explosive testimony from former White House aide Cassidy Hutchinson provided to the select committee in 2022.
Hutchinson testified that she had been told by Secret Service agent Anthony Ornato—who was in turn informed by another agent—that Trump had attempted to physically seize control of the presidential SUV when he was told he could not attend the riot. Testimony from the agent driving the vehicle, nicknamed “The Beast,” completely contradicted this story, but the select committee appears to have suppressed transcripts of this interview.
“Despite the driver of the president’s SUV testifying under oath that the Hutchinson story was false, the select committee chose to validate and promote Hutchinson’s version of the story as fact,” House Republicans said in the new report. “The select committee hid the driver’s full testimony and only favorably mentioned his testimony in its final report, it did not release the full transcript,” the report added.
Connor Walcott is a staff writer for Valuetainment.com. Follow Connor on X and look for him on VT’s “The Unusual Suspects.”
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