'Stain on Mr. Trump’s legacy': WSJ blasts president's Jan. 6 blanket pardons

The Wall Street Journal editorial board scorched President Donald Trump on Tuesday for his decision to issue a blanket pardon of 1,500 people who stormed the Capitol on Jan. 6 to try to prevent the transition of power from himself to former President Joe Biden.

Though a deeply conservative editorial board, the Journal has frequently criticized the president, including over his recently invigorated obsession with seizing the Panama Canal.

But on this, the board was even more furious.

"Republicans are busy denouncing President Biden’s pre-emptive pardons for his family and political allies, and deservedly so," wrote the board. "But then it’s a shame you don’t hear many, if any, ruing President Trump’s proclamation to pardon unconditionally nearly all of the people who rioted at the U.S. Capitol on Jan. 6, 2021. This includes those convicted of bludgeoning, chemical spraying, and electroshocking police to try to keep Mr. Trump in power. Now he’s springing them from prison."

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Such a move, they continued, is a "rotten message from a President about political violence done on his behalf, and it’s a bait and switch," given that both Trump himself and Vice President J.D. Vance seemed to suggest for weeks they'd review each case individually and only give clemency to non-violent offenders.

"So much for that.," the board wrote. "The President’s clemency proclamation commutes prison sentences to time served for 14 named people, including prominent leaders of the Proud Boys and Oath Keepers, who were organized and ready for violence. Then Mr. Trump tries to wipe Jan. 6 clean, with 'a full, complete and unconditional pardon to all other individuals.' The conceit is that there are hundreds of polite Trump supporters who ended up in the wrong place that day and have since rotted in jail." And yet, the board noted, Trump pardoned people guilty of gruesome assaults on Capitol police, including with wasp spray, brass knuckles, and electroshock devices — who make up most of the people who actually received lengthy sentences.

The worst part, the board continued, is that the GOP understood how horrific this attack was in the immediate aftermath.

"'There is nothing patriotic about what is occurring on Capitol Hill,' one GOP official tweeted. 'This is 3rd world style anti-American anarchy,'" wrote the board. "That was Marco Rubio, now Mr. Trump’s Secretary of State. He was right. What happened that day is a stain on Mr. Trump’s legacy. By setting free the cop beaters, the President adds another."