Trump's J6 pardons are 'high crime' and 'abuse of power' legal expert says
At least four well-respected current and retired federal judges have spoken out to denounce President Donald Trump's sweeping, unilateral pardons of over 1500 people convicted of numerous crimes related to the January 6 insurrection and attack on the Capitol, and his commutations for "14 members of far-right extremist groups." A constitutional scholar and retired Harvard law professor has suggested Trump's acts of clemency could be considered a "high crime and misdemeanor," worthy of impeachment.
"No stroke of a pen and no proclamation can alter the facts of what took place on January 6, 2021," wrote U.S. District Judge Amy Berman Jackson, the latest judge to denounce the pardons, as Politico's senior legal affairs reporter Kyle Cheney reported. "When others in the public eye are not willing to risk their own power or popularity by calling out lies when they hear them, the record of the proceedings in this courthouse will be available to those who seek the truth."
Judge Jackson pointed to "the hundreds of law enforcement officers who put their lives on the line against impossible odds to protect not only the U.S. Capitol building and the people who worked there," and noted that those workers "were huddled inside in terror as windows and doors were shattered."
She wrote of "those valiant officers who fulfilled their oaths to 'support and defend the Constitution of the United States against all enemies, foreign and domestic.'"
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"They are the patriots. Patriotism is loyalty to country and loyalty to the Constitution - not loyalty to a single head of state."
A second jurist also denounced Trump's pardons.
Trump "said the clemency would begin a process of 'reconciliation' and correct a 'grave national injustice', but in a scathing order on Wednesday the US district judge Beryl Howell disagreed," The Guardian reported.
“No ‘national injustice’ occurred here, just as no outcome-determinative election fraud occurred in the 2020 presidential election,” Howell wrote.
“No ‘process of national reconciliation’ can begin when poor losers, whose preferred candidate loses an election, are glorified for disrupting a constitutionally mandated proceeding in Congress and doing so with impunity,” she added. “This court cannot let stand the revisionist myth relayed in this presidential pronouncement.”
U.S. District Judge Tanya Chutkan, who presided over Trump's January 6 attack and election subversion case prosecuted by Special Counsel Jack Smith, delivered one of the more scathing denunciations.
She wrote that the pardons “cannot whitewash the blood, feces, and terror that the mob left in its wake,” as The Guardian also reported.
“It cannot repair the jagged breach in America’s sacred tradition of peacefully transitioning power,” Chutkan continued.“In hundreds of cases like this one over the past four years, judges in this district have administered justice without fear or favor. The historical record established by those proceedings must stand, unmoved by political winds, as a testament and as a warning.”
On Wednesday, a well-known retired U.S. District Judge, who served on the federal bench for over three decades, also condemned Trump's pardons.
"Former U.S District Judge Shira Scheindlin agrees with the judges who sentenced the Jan. 6 rioters and are criticizing Trump’s pardons," CNN's Kaitlan Collins noted.
“They had a trial before a jury and the jury convicted them," Judge Scheindlin said (video below). "This is all nonsense. These people are not hostages. They’re not heroes. They’re not political prisoners. They’re criminals. They attacked people. They assaulted people.”
Repeatedly calling Trump's acts of clemency "overly broad," Judge Scheindlin told Collins, "I know the views of probably every judge, no matter who appointed that judge, or Republican president, Democratic president, it doesn't matter. The process worked, the trials were fair. As you said, many of these people pled guilty. There there's really no excuse for this."
"They sat through trials, they worked hard on those trials," she said of the judges. The people who were convicted "had a chance to tell their stories."
"They had a trial before a jury and the jury convicted them. So, this is all nonsense. These people are not hostages, they're not heroes, they're not political prisoners. They're criminals, they attacked people, they assaulted people, they committed property damage. They committed so many crimes, of course, the seditious conspiracy that you mentioned, and they were convicted and sentenced. So I understand there's a pardon power, but this was overly broad."
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"All these people, I thought [Trump] was going to separate them, violent and the nonviolent. That's what JD Vance told us...It didn't happen. He just pardoned all of them because he can."
Retired Harvard Law Professor Laurence Tribe, a well-regarded constitutional scholar, responded:
"Absolutely right, Judge Scheindlin. These pardons are legally authorized but constitutionally unpardonable. Their issuance is a 'high crime and misdemeanor' within the meaning of the Impeachment Clause because it is a clear abuse of presidential power."
Watch the video below or at this link.
Former U.S District Judge Shira Scheindlin agrees with the judges who sentenced the Jan. 6 rioters and are criticizing Trump’s pardons: “They had a trial before a jury and the jury convicted them. This is all nonsense. These people are not hostages. They’re not heroes. They’re… pic.twitter.com/hLb5pnny7f
— Kaitlan Collins (@kaitlancollins) January 23, 2025
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