President Donald Trump went as scorched-earth as he possibly could in the January 6 pardons, former federal prosecutor Elie Honig told CNN's Sara Sidner on Tuesday morning — a clemency for violent assaults on police so total that even many conservatives are unable to defend it.
"Let's start with this," said Sidner. "The scope of these pardons is enormous. Was this a surprise to you? Because it certainly seemed like a surprise to J.D. Vance, who had said that he didn't agree with the January 6th pardons for violent offenders."
"When Donald Trump first said the number 1,500 in that Oval Office conference, I thought he misspoke. I thought he was just mistaken. But no, it is 1,500, and that is all of them. So that people understand, the reason it was a surprise is because Donald Trump himself had suggested he didn't quite commit, but he suggested that he would be drawing lines and perhaps not pardoning violent offenders. J.D. Vance, as you said, he said, quote, obviously they should not be pardoning people who had been convicted of violent crimes.
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However, he continued, "the numbers here are astonishing. Over 1,500 people were charged, over 1,200 people were convicted. Somewhere around over 300 people are in jail now. They will be released today and about 160-plus of those defendants were convicted of some sort of violent crime. But Donald Trump has swept the table here. Everybody is going to be either pardoned or have their sentence commuted. All those cases are going to be over."
"And we should say, because I've been to a couple of these trials, including the Oath Keepers and the Proud Boys, that, you know, in many of these cases, people pled guilty to the charges against them as well," said Sidner. "You know, with the stroke of a pen, he pardoned all of these people, as you mentioned, even those convicted of violence during the January 6th Capitol attack."
"Essentially the record is wiped clean on them," agreed Honig. "The convictions themselves are essentially erased. Then you have a group of people who are in prison. Now, as I said, over about 300 or so. They get released immediately. There is no appeal here. There's no trying to undo this. The pardon power is a very blunt instrument that the president holds."
As for the few hundred remaining cases being litigated, he added, they will end "mid-stride."
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