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Many AmericansdjdjdjUS Your browser does not support the element. hope that Donald Trump will fulfil his campaign pledges to bring down prices and deport illegal immigrants. But a small group of convicted rioters are on tenterhooks over another electioneering promise. Mr Trump has repeatedly vowed to free his supporters who were imprisoned for storming the Capitol on January 6th 2021. He has repeatedly called them “hostages” and “unbelievable patriots” while recasting the attempt to disrupt the peaceful transfer of power as “a day of love”. “Why are they still being held?” Mr Trump mused weeks before the election. His return to the White House means he could soon pardon them all.Enrique Tarrio, the former leader of the Proud Boys, a far-right group, who is serving a 22-year sentence for his role in the attack, told in June that he reckons Mr Trump will “right all the injustices and inequalities of the past four years”. After the election his lawyer issued a statement applauding the result. In Miami, Mr Tarrio’s hometown, Proud Boys are making plans for reunions. “Our boys, and all other political prisoners, are now coming home!” says a friend of Mr Tarrio.To date, the federal government has charged 1,561 people for crimes arising from the Capitol attack; 979 pleaded guilty and 645 went to prison. At least seven, including Mr Tarrio and Stewart Rhodes, the head of the Oath Keepers, a far-right militia, were put away for more than a decade. The Department of Justice (o) has not said how many remain in custody but the number probably runs into the hundreds. What would it mean for them to be freed?The cases were politically fraught from the start. Within the o, higher-ups feared infringing on defendants’ rights to free expression. Some prosecutors were frustrated by that: “If they were al-Qaeda this would have been a national emergency, but these were good ol’ boys from rural America so it was different,” says one.Yet the evidence in many of the Capitol cases was rock-solid—security footage was supplemented by screenshots of defendants bragging about what they did on social media. A consensus gradually developed within the o that the law required extensive prosecutions.The result was a sweeping success. Jury after jury sided with the prosecutors and found the rioters guilty of assaulting police officers, causing civil disorder and other crimes. Although judges often handed down lighter sentences than the government asked for, the verdicts disrupted groups like the Oath Keepers.A president’s power to pardon people convicted of federal crimes is enshrined in the constitution. Yet if Mr Trump frees hundreds of January 6th prisoners early in his term, he would depart dramatically from precedent. Historically, the justification for mass amnesty—for low-level marijuana offenders, for example—has been to remedy past injustices and bring the country together, says Kimberly Wehle, a law professor at the University of Baltimore. Mr Trump would be ratifying his own claims of innocence over January 6th.Prosecutors worry that freeing January 6th prisoners will affect how justice is meted out during Mr Trump’s second term. “If violent [Trump] supporters are pardoned, prosecutors will have to assume that ordinary supporters” such as businessmen close to the president “will also be pardoned” if charged with wrongdoing, says Louis Manzo, who prosecuted 25 Oath Keepers before leaving the government.On November 8th, William Pope, a January 6th defendant who has pled not guilty to disorderly conduct charges, warned a judge that advancing his case before Mr Trump’s inauguration could “lead to a dangerous cycle of escalating retribution” and that it would “be wise” for the court to take up this “final opportunity to make peace” before setting him free. His words suggested how emboldened some of the accused already feel.
