President Donald Trump’s blanket absolution of everyone who was convicted or charged with crimes related to the January 6, 2021, attack on the U.S. Capitol appears to have been just the opening move in a retribution playbook.
On its own, it was an assault against the legitimacy of the criminal legal system, at least 140 law enforcement officers injured in the attack, the members of congress and their staffs who had to flee for their lives, and the judges who handled nearly 1,600 cases over the last four years, working to ensure that every defendant received due process of law. Whether appointed by a Republican president, a Democratic president, or Donald Trump himself, the judges have condemned the criminal actions of those who were convicted in the effort to interrupt the peaceful transition of power. Several have noted that the pardons, commutations, and dismissals cannot change the truth of what happened on January 6. The lasting harm to the impartial application of the rule of law is immeasurable. As the former chief judge of the district court in D.C. put it, “No ‘process of national reconciliation’”—a phrase Trump used in the pardon proclamation after calling the prosecutions “a grave national injustice”—“can begin when sore losers, whose preferred candidate loses an election, are glorified for disrupting a constitutionally mandated proceeding in Congress and doing so with impunity. That merely raises the dangerous specter of future lawless conduct by other sore losers and undermines the rule of law.”
We now know that the pardons were just the beginning.
Since January 20, not only have career federal prosecutors who worked on Special Counsel Jack Smith’s team been fired, but dozens who worked on the prosecutions of the attackers have been terminated. The interim U.S. Attorney in D.C., (who fails to include “Interim” before his name on court filings, despite the fact that he has not been presidentially appointed or Senate-confirmed) has launched an internal investigation into the office’s charging hundreds of attackers with obstruction of an official proceeding, an offense that was narrowed by the Supreme Court last summer, but the use of which had been first brought by the Trump Justice Department and subsequently upheld by 14 out of 15 district court judges, as well as two of three appellate judges. And now the acting leadership of the Department of Justice (no one there has been Senate-confirmed yet), has ordered the firing of senior FBI leadership and an examination of thousands of FBI employees across the country who worked on January 6-related matters, explicitly “to determine whether any additional personnel actions are necessary.” The White House reportedly may publicly release the names of agents who worked on the two criminal cases against Trump, in addition to firing them.
So much for the promises of Trump’s Attorney General nominee, Pam Bondi, and FBI director nominee, Kash Patel, not to target prosecutors or investigators with political retribution; it appears that is being done before they even come up for a vote.
The Senate must act now to delay any vote on Bondi until she explains how she will redress the damage already done. And the Senate Judiciary Committee must bring Patel back before the committee to do the same. Not only are many of the firings in violation of law, and will cause an “extreme disruption” (in the words of Michael Clark, President, Society of Former Agents of FBI) in the ability of the DOJ and FBI to protect public safety and national security across the country, but they also put a target on the backs of career government prosecutors and investigators who have simply done their jobs over the last four years. This would be dangerous enough, but in combination with the blanket absolution of those who attacked the U.S. Capitol, and the praise that President Trump has heaped upon them, the potential for vigilante retribution just went up precipitously.
Note: The views expressed in this piece are those of the author and do not necessarily reflect the views of any organization or institution.