U.S. District Judge Tanya Chutkan had some harsh words for the Jan. 6 rioters President Donald Trump just pardoned en masse.
"No pardon can change the tragic truth of what happened on January 6, 2021," Chutkan wrote in a new statement dismissing one of the cases, quoting from filings against several other defendants who are now being fully pardoned. "On that day, 'a mob professing support for then-President Trump violently attacked the Capitol' ... the dismissal of this case cannot undo the 'rampage [that] left multiple people dead, injured more than 140 people, and inflicted millions of dollars in damage' ... it cannot diminish the heroism of law enforcement who 'struggled, facing serious injury and even death, to control the mob that overwhelmed them' ... it cannot whitewash the blood, feces, and terror that the mob left in its wake."
Above all, she wrote, "It cannot repair the jagged breach in America's sacred tradition of peacefully transitioning power."
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Chutkan oversaw many of the Jan. 6 cases. She also famously oversaw special counsel Jack Smith's federal election conspiracy case against Trump himself, which was put on hold for months over a Supreme Court debate on presidential immunity, and finally discarded altogether with Trump's re-election.
She joins a chorus of federal judges condemning the pardons, including Judge Colleen Kollar-Kotelly, who warned Trump's actions "will not change the truth of what happened," and Judge Beryl Howell, who slammed Trump for pushing a "revisionist myth" that the defendants were denied fair hearings.
Trump's pardon extends to roughly 1,500 people who stormed the Capitol, including hundreds who violently assaulted police officers — despite Vice President J.D. Vance suggesting the Trump administration would review each case individually to prioritize nonviolent offenders. He also gave commutations to far-right paramilitary leaders involved in the attack who were convicted of seditious conspiracy, including figures in the Proud Boys and Oath Keepers, retaining their criminal records but releasing them from their lengthy prison sentences.
