2024 could be a “get out of jail free” election for Donald Trump’s January 6 rioters

WASHINGTON – If Donald Trump wins in November, hundreds of people in prison for the riots at the U.S. Capitol on Jan. 6, 2021, could be released before the end of their sentences.

The former president has repeatedly stated that he would consider pardoning his supporters for their actions that day, and at least some of them have taken the idea to heart.

On Monday, hours after being sentenced to 20 years in prison for violently attacking police officers at the Capitol with a flagpole and other improvised weapons, David Dempsey had a message for the Antifa guys he imagined would cheer his punishment.

“Don’t celebrate too much, man, because this sentence is only going to last about six months,” Dempsey said, speaking by phone from the DC jail to a small group of Trump supporters who keeps watch outside every night.

“And then we're going to have to pull our balls over your foreheads for four years,” Dempsey said, “because Donald Trump is going to win.”

Nearly 1,500 people have been charged for their actions at the Capitol, where they marched with Trump's encouragement to use physical force to prevent Congress from certifying Trump's defeat in the 2020 election.

Almost all of the defendants are accused of entering restricted areas, and over 500 of them have been charged with assaulting or obstructing the police. According to the Ministry of JusticeNearly 900 people have pleaded guilty to various crimes, while 186 have been found guilty in controversial trials. More than 560 have been sentenced to prison terms.

How many could drop out early if Trump wins? The former president said last year in May he would probably pardon “a large portion” of his gang, but not all of them. “I can't speak for every single one of them, because some of them are probably out of control,” he said.

Last fall, Trump said he would appoint a task force “to expeditiously review the cases of every political prisoner wrongfully prosecuted by the Biden administration.”

He said they would consider pardoning everyone this year, but would be selective about who would ultimately be pardoned or commuted to a lesser prison sentence, using vague criteria.

“If someone was evil and bad, I would see it differently,” Trump said told Time Magazine in April“But many of these people went in, many of these people were led in. You can see it on the tape, the police lead them in. They go with the police.”

The rioters first entered the Capitol by breaking a window and fought police at several other entrances. When pressed by ABC News' Rachel Scott earlier this month on whether he would pardon rioters who fought police, Trump said: said he was open to it.

“If they are innocent, I would pardon them,” Trump said.

There have been many controversial pardons in American history, including mass pardons of unpopular groups, but never before has a presidential candidate financed his campaign in part by bailing out hundreds of his own convicted supporters, says Barbara Perry, the Gerald L. Baliles Professor of Presidential Studies at the University of Virginia's Miller Center.

“You're always going to get some people upset when a president decides to commute a sentence, pardon someone or grant amnesty,” Perry said. “But this case seems particularly difficult to me because these people did something to the United States Congress while it was carrying out its constitutional duty to certify the presidential election.”

The biggest historical parallel, Perry said, is probably Jimmy Carter's campaign promise to pardon hundreds of thousands of draft dodgers, a promise he made good on his first full day as president in January 1977. The Vietnam War had been over for three years and Carter, a Democrat, said the mass pardons were necessary to “heal our country,” although he A majority of Americans expected the.

“I'm not sure Jimmy Carter was trying to get the votes of men who had run off to Canada,” Perry said. “Especially given his religious background as a born-again Christian, I think he saw this as a model of forgiveness that he was working with.”

During his first term, Trump pardoned 237 people, often bypassing the office of the pardon attorney, and pardoned or commuted the sentences of his personal political allies, many of whom had been convicted of fraud or public corruption.

While Trump and other Republicans have tried to downplay the insurrection, claiming, for example, that it was staged by shady government agents, the rioters and their families have become a key constituency. The most prominent advocates for the Jan. 6 defendants — whom Trump and many other Republicans know as “hostages” or “political prisoners” — are relatives like Nicole Reffitt, whose husband, Guy Reffitt, was sentenced to seven years in prison for leading an attack on the Capitol grounds, and Micki Witthoeft, the mother of Ashli ​​Babbitt, who was shot as she tried to climb through a door inside the building.

For each of the past three years, the jail has held several dozen Jan. 6 offenders, typically those awaiting trial or transfer to a federal prison after sentencing. As of Friday, 28 Capitol rioters were being held there, according to the DC federal prosecutor.

Nicole Reffitt, Witthoeft and others have led the vigil outside the DC Jail, which has been a nonstop nightly activity for three years now. On a typical night, one or more inmates call Nicole Reffitt's cell phone, and she then holds it up to a microphone connected to a small speaker. They talk about the day's news, the status of their cases, then sing the national anthem and end the event with a collective sing-along of Lee Greenwood's “God Bless the USA.”

Trump himself called the vigil and even contributed to an audio track in which the inmates, performing as the “J6 Prison Choir,” sing the Star-Spangled Banner and Trump recites the Pledge of Allegiance.

Not everyone is keen on the idea of ​​a general pardon. Nicole Reffitt believes her husband was charged with too many crimes and deserves a shorter prison sentence than he received, but not that he deserves no prison sentence at all.

“We agree with some of the things he was accused of, because he did indeed commit them. He committed trespassing,” she told HuffPost. “But wrongdoers get away with a lot of bad things if they just get through and, let's say, pardon or commute the sentence. And a lot of the people who were guilty on January 6 really want that, but things happened that day and people should be held accountable for their actions.”

Prosecutors say Guy Reffitt recruited others to come to Washington and incited violence while wearing a bulletproof vest and carrying a gun. But he did not enter the Capitol himself or attack police officers, although he encouraged others to do so. (His sentence could be reduced even without a pardon because the Supreme Court believes prosecutors went too far in their interpretation of an obstruction of justice law used against Guy Reffitt and 258 others, including Trump himself.)

Nicole Reffitt said she hopes whoever wins in November will consider reviewing the Jan. 6 indictment.

“I hope whoever is elected wants to do that,” she said. “I don't think that will be the case, but that would be my wish that our savior is not Donald Trump.”

Prosecutors described Dempsey as “political violence personified.” His 20-year prison sentence is the longest ever given to a rioter. In federal court on Monday, Dempsey apologized to the police for his actions.

“You fulfilled your duties and I responded with hostility and violence,” he said.

Later that evening, when he called to the vigilHe showed no remorse, calling an FBI agent a “damn coward” for not looking him in the eye during the sentencing hearing. He also seemed to acknowledge the possibility that he would not receive a pardon.

“None of that shit matters. The point is, my child is not going to stop loving me, my family is going to continue to support me,” he said before an automated voice warned him that his call from prison would only take a minute. “On November 5th, please get your asses out there and vote for the greatest president we've ever had in this country, Donald J. Trump.”