Below is my column in The Hill on the furious response of some judges in Washington over the Trump pardons. One judge, however, may have ventured too far in effectively banishing commuted defendants from Washington, D.C. without his prior approval.
Here is the column:
Even though President Trump had made it a campaign pledge to pardon those involved in the Jan. 6, 2021 Capitol riot, the roughly 1,500 pardons Trump issued on his first day produced familiar reactions from politicians and pundits.
In Philadelphia, District Attorney Larry Krasner pledged to pursue those pardoned or commuted with new charges on the state level — eclipsing Manhattan District Attorney Alvin Bragg in repackaging federal crimes as state offenses.
Others cited the pardons as evidence of an even greater plot or purpose. On MSNBC, former NAACP Legal Defense and Educational Fund head Sherrilyn Ifill declared that the pardons were all part of a plan to build an army of “brownshirts.”
Not to be outdone, Rep. Jamie Raskin (D-Md.) warned that Trump was issuing pardons to create a “reserve army of political foot soldiers to act on behalf of MAGA and Donald Trump.”
Such hyperbole, particularly the Nazi references, is now commonplace. Indeed, the left jumped the shark on the Nazi-mania and death-of-democracy mantra months ago. This week, however, some of the most strident comments seem to be coming from the federal bench itself.
Indeed, some judges used dismissal hearings to launch into what seemed at points like cable-ready commentary. Take District Court Judge Tanya Chutkan, an Obama appointee who had previously presided over Trump’s election interference case.
Chutkan had been criticized for failing to recuse herself from that case after she made highly controversial statements about Trump from the bench. In a sentencing hearing of a Jan. 6 rioter in 2022, Chutkan said that the rioters “were there in fealty, in loyalty, to one man — not to the Constitution.” She added then, “[i]t’s a blind loyalty to one person who, by the way, remains free to this day.” That “one person” was still under investigation at the time and, when Trump was charged, Chutkan refused to let the case go.
She then pursued Trump with a vigor second only to Special Counsel Jack Smith.
In the latest hearing, Chutkan again decided to use the bench to amplify her own views of the pardons and Jan. 6. She proclaimed that the pardons could not change the “tragic truth” and “cannot whitewash the blood, feces and terror that the mob left in its wake. And it cannot repair the jagged breach in America’s sacred tradition of peacefully transitioning power.”
In fairness, judges often express the gravity of offenses at sentencing, and most of us certainly share the strong revulsion over what occurred on Jan. 6. However, these cases are being dismissed after an election whose winner explicitly pledged to close the prosecutions through executive clemency.
The defendant in her courtroom was there to have a required dismissal entered in his case, not to hear Judge Chutkan speaking truth to power. In this case, she is the power. It is the power to rule dispassionately on the specific case before her. It is not the power to hold court on the merits of presidential decisions.
Down the hall, Chutkan’s colleague Judge Beryl Howell, also an Obama appointee, lashed out at Trump’s actions, writing, “[T]his Court cannot let stand the revisionist myth relayed in this presidential pronouncement.”
Yet, all of that paled in comparison to what their colleague U.S. District Judge Amit Mehta, also an Obama appointee, did with his Jan. 6 cases. He ordered J6 defendants to seek prior approval before going to Capitol Hill or even coming within any of the 69 square miles of the nation’s Capitol. Thus Mehta practically banished Oath Keepers founder Stewart Rhodes and seven other defendants.
It does not appear that the Trump Justice Department requested such restrictions, but Mehta was able to impose them because those defendants had received commutations rather than pardons. A commutation does not require the dismissal of a case, and courts are generally allowed to set conditions for released defendants.
However, these are new conditions imposed after presidential commutations. More importantly, they could affect the exercise of First Amendment rights from free speech to free association to the right to petition the government. For example, Rhodes and others would have to disclose intended meetings with members of Congress or participation in political events.
Rhodes previously asked to speak to the House committee that investigated the riot, but the Democrat-controlled committee refused to allow it. (A Yale law graduate, Rhodes insisted that the hearing be conducted in public, the very condition Hunter Biden made with the support of some of these same members.)
What if Rhodes now wants to meet privately with members to supply his testimony? He would need Mehta to approve it and potentially make such plans public.
In my book, “The Indispensable Right,” I discuss the J6 cases and serious concerns over what a top Justice Department official called the “shock and awe” campaign to make an example of the defendants by throwing the book at them.
Nevertheless, even though I opposed the seditious conspiracy charges on legal grounds, I did not support the pardoning of violent offenders who attacked police officers.
The court system plays a key role in either tamping down or fueling rage in society. The book details how “rage rhetoric” often became state rage during periods of crackdowns on free speech. Over the last two centuries, some judges used their courtrooms to lash out at political opponents, anarchists, unionists or communists.
I was particularly concerned in these cases with sentences that seemed visceral, even gratuitous, in denying free speech rights. In Washington, judges imposed limits on what political views defendants could read or share.
For example, Judge Reggie B. Walton, a Bush appointee who had previously called Trump a “charlatan,” had before him a typical Jan. 6 case — that of Daniel Goodwyn, 35, of Corinth, Texas. Goodwyn pleaded guilty on Jan. 31, 2023, to one misdemeanor count of entering and remaining in a restricted building. It is a minor offense that generated little jail time.
However, Walton faulted Goodwyn for appearing on Fox News and spreading “disinformation,” and so he ordered the government to monitor what he was viewing and discussing. The D.C. Circuit Court of Appeals rebuked Walton for that surveillance order, but he doubled down. On remand, the Biden Justice Department insisted that Goodwyn was unrepentant and still viewing “extremist media.”
Walton, therefore, determined that the risk was too great in Goodwyn spreading “false narratives” when we are “on the heels of another election.”
Now, his colleague is similarly ordering that those freed under Trump’s commutations will disclose and seek approval to go to the Capitol to speak with members or other citizens.
Many of us have long viewed the Jan. 6 riot as a desecration of our constitutional process. Few people want to defend Rhodes or either the Oath Keepers or the Proud Boys. However, the First Amendment was not written to protect popular speech or popular individuals.
The Mehta order should not push President Trump toward converting these commutations into pardons. It should also not prevent us from questioning the court’s authority to regulate the exercise of First Amendment rights.
Jonathan Turley is the Shapiro Professor of Public Interest Law at George Washington University and the author of “The Indispensable Right: Free Speech in an Age of Rage.”
The “desecration of our constitutional process” on 1/6/21 was for Congress to run and hide like cowards instead of standing and fight off any breaches !
Turley: is there any bottom to your willingness to carry water for MAGA media? You claim: “Few people want to defend Rhodes or either the Oath Keepers or the Proud Boys. However, the First Amendment was not written to protect popular speech or popular individuals.” Turley–how can you actually write crap like this and call yourself a lawyer? The difference between a First Amendment freedom of speech issue and an insurrection are: 1. J6 was PLANNED for the specific purpose to try to keep Trump in power even though he had lost, by preventing Congress from accepting the certified votes–by FORCE. A British investigative reporter who was embedded with the Proud Boys testified that he went along on a reconnaissance mission before January 6th, to plot the most-vulnerable point of entry into the Capitol. The plan was to distract Capitol Police away from this point in order to get past the police barriers; 2. there were planning meetings at the Willard Hotel, plotting on how to steal Biden’s victory, including getting fake electors to falsify Electoral College vote forms–which is a felony; 3. There were “Stop the Steal” rallies conducted by Trump, who lied to his followers by claiming that his “victory” was stolen by widespread fraud; he exhorted them to descend on Washington, promising it “would be wild”; 4. The followers of Trump had a cache of weapons stored in a Virginia hotel room, waiting for their hero to lead them. He didn’t show up, which is too bad, because maybe he could have gotten shot–something that one of his devoted fans experienced; he could have gotten beaten up–something numerous Capitol Police officers experienced all in the line of duty. But, he definitely would have been arrested and had that wig pried off of his head. Trump only called off the insurrectionists after 3 hours of mayhem because it became clear they had failed. Members of Congress got to safety. Pence refused to leave the Capitol complex until he finished what he came to do. Trump’s efforts to bully Pence failed. Trump’s efforts to litigate his way into the White House failed. Freedom of speech had nothing to do with the property damage and vicious assaults on police officers Trump caused because of his lies–it is outrageous for you, Turley, to deliberately mischaracterize this behavior as “freedom of speech”.
This is just another impotent effort to change the actual, planned, insurrection into some kind of First Amendment “freedom of speech” defense–all to entertain the gullibles and try to convert January 6th from the planned insurrection it was into a First Amendment protected “protest”–all reinforce the MAGA media efforts to revise history.
The Judges, media and other you criticize Turley are RIGHT. Trump lied to get into office in 2024. He stole the power to pardon those dumbaxxes who committed crimes against America in his name. That is outrageous, and it is proper for Judges to express such outrage because they are the consciences of the American people. You can try to paint January 6th as some sort of “freedom of speech” event–but that’s a lie, Turley.
Does MSM have any viewers left? The following is the first sentence in a story about media coverage of the two sets of pardons issued the same day by two different presidents:
Flagship newscasts on ABC, CBS and NBC spent over 46 minutes covering President Donald Trump pardoning Jan. 6 defendants but barely found time to mention former President Joe Biden issuing preemptive pardons for his family, according to a new study.
https://www.foxnews.com/media/abc-cbs-nbc-spent-over-46-minutes-covering-trump-jan-6-pardons-3-minutes-biden-pardoning-his-family
Old man
There were the two tranny militants in Vermont recently but now there’s only one, and zer has to fight for channel control in the general population area. Their audience has really taken a nose dive…
Very informative, Dr. Hurley. News, nor anything close to it found in the MSM.
Professor Turley, can you spot the difference:
1. U.S. District Judge Amit Mehta, an Obama appointee, ordered J6 defendants to seek prior approval before going to Capitol Hill or even coming within any of the 69 square miles of the nation’s Capitol.
MEANWHILE:
2. Amit Mehta, FISA judge, did NOT drag the Obama Attorney Generals and FBI Directors who perjured themselves to him back into his courts to sentence for at least contempt of court.
Now, can you spot the difference Professor Turley? Does the blatant, political police state fascist double standards of your fellow Washington DC Bar Association Democrat lawyer cause you any “strong feelings of revulsion”?
Or is it that ol’ Democrat Different Double Standards practiced by Democrat lawyers from the Washington DC Bar Association lawyers like yourself and Judge Mehta?
Old Airborne Dog
First ammendment protects speech. Not violence, Turls. Your efforts to put lipstick on this pig notwithstanding.
That’s what the Second Amendment is for…one is meaningless without the other.
^ paid DNC troll, ignore ^
It does too protect violence as long as the violence is carried out by thugs supporting leftist causes, eg, Antifa’s burning down cities in a mostly peaceful way during the summer of love in 2020.
Let’s see if I’ve got this right. They changed the voting rules in Pennsylvania and Biden won in 2020. Once it was revealed that they illegally changed the rules Trump won Pennsylvania in 2024. The protestors in pink hats said they thought about burning the Whitehouse and being the next actor to assassinate a President. The question is did the riot happen first or did the spraying of tear gas on the crowd happen first? The real travesty is that Nancy Pelosi would not approve the 10,000 National Guard troops that Trump requested that would have kept things under control. Hmmm, it’s almost like the Democrats wanted it to happen. How can one dismiss this idea haven been subjected to the fostering of Trump being a Russian agent by Hillary Clinton. Let’s see, riot versus acts of treason to undermine an American election? The Professor is a good man but he has a tendency toward the naive.
“The Professor is a good man but he has a tendency toward the naive.”
The professor has an established proclivity to apply the Democrat Different Double Standards to what used to be the American: “Equal In The Eyes Of The Law; Equal Justice For All”
The pejoratives that our host directs towards Trump, the J6 trespassers, paraders, and rioters is not matched by similar pejoratives directed at his fellow Washington DC lawyers he rubs shoulders with at the liquor bar at their meetings.
No matter how many felonies his fellow bar members have committed while abusing their political offices to deprive Americans of their civil rights through color of law.
The hypocrisy of his analysis would be breathtaking… except it has become the norm for Democrat lawyers making their living in some aspect of the political arena.
Old Airborne Dog
82nd Airblown Puppy, what was your MOS in the war or did you steal that valor?
TIT: No, you don’t “got” this right. In 2020, because your fat hero let COVID get out of control, in Pennsylvania they expanded voting by mail–to help curb the spread of disease. Biden won, just like polls predicted he would. THERE IS NOT ANY EVIDENCE OF VOTER FRAUD. Loser Republicans challenged the expansion of voting court. MAGA media lies to you by telling you that this was illegal–so you would draw the incorrect conclusion.
As to 2024, Trump LIED about being able to immediately bring down the cost of groceries–this lie drove numerous people to vote for him who would not have otherwise–that’s why Trump “won” Pennsylvania in 2024. I use quotes around the word “won”, because to get people who are worried about the high cost of groceries to vote for you based on a lie is CHEATING.
STOP LYING ABOUT NANCY PELOSI NOT “APPROVING” 10,000 NATIONAL GUARD TROOPS–Trump NEVER “requested” them–that DID NOT HAPPEN–and NO member of Congress has the authority to activate the National Guard–another MAGA media lie. From “Politifact”:
“Social media users across X, Instagram, Facebook and TikTok reshared the footage and made a slightly different claim: that the video shows Pelosi, D-Calif., saying “she takes responsibility for not having the National Guard” at the Capitol that day.
The Instagram and Facebook posts were flagged as part of Meta’s efforts to combat false news and misinformation on its News Feed. (Read more about our partnership with Meta, which owns Facebook and Instagram.) The TikTok posts were identified as part of TikTok’s efforts to counter inauthentic, misleading or false content. (Read more about PolitiFact’s partnership with TikTok.)
No member of Congress has the authority to activate the District of Columbia National Guard. Only the president, Defense secretary and U.S. Army secretary do.
In response to the newly released footage, Pelosi said in a June 10 MSNBC interview that former President Donald Trump and “his toadies do not want to face the facts. They’re trying to do revisionist history.”
Aaron Bennett, Pelosi’s spokesperson, told PolitiFact in a statement that Jan. 6, 2021, footage in its entirety shows Pelosi called Pentagon officials who can authorize use of the National Guard and urged them to deploy the guard.
“Cherry-picked, out-of-context clips do not change the fact that the Speaker of the House is not in charge of the security of the Capitol Complex — on January 6th or any other day of the week,” Bennett said.”
And, now, you see why Trump has bullied Meta and other social media into NOT fact-checking him–something Turley calls “censorship”–but what responsible ACTUAL journalists call professionalism. This is the beef Trump has with REAL journalists–they check facts. MAGA media are not journalists. This media was started by billionaries to convince people like you to vote Republican so they can get huge tax breaks and rolling back of consumer and environmental protections and make more $$$$$$$$. They push conspiracy theories.
They push culture wars nonsense. They spread lies–they refuse to fact-check the obese orange liar in chief–and people like you not only believe the lies, but keep spreading them.
These three horrible excuses for judges, are why America can not be fixed within the bounds of democracy. Technically, these three could be impeached on the grounds of excessive partisanship, rendering them unfit for office. But there are hundreds more just like them, and even these three will never be impeached. And that does not remove the thousands of freaks just like them spread throughout the government. Those people will stand like a bulwark in the way of fixing the Nation.
I guess that we could continue on, for a while longer, like we are now, part first-world country and part third-world. As long as we keep our gun rights, and the right of self-defense. But pretty soon, the nice areas of town will be invaded more and more often.
Jon, I don’t know why you keep harping on the Oath Keepers. It is/was an organization made up of former and current military personnel and law enforcement officers who once took an oath to support and defend the Constitution, unlike the Congressmen and others who use it for their own purposes. Their “crime” is exercising our First Amendment rights.
How is a prosecutor in Pennsylvania going to bring state charges for an event that occurred in DC?
These judges have taken off their black robes and donned the clothing of partisan foot soldiers for the deranged Left. They act like the very thing they accuse others of. As for the Trump administration, it is a very strange “fascist” government that dismantles the government-censorship complex and releases to the public files and documents that were previously kept secret. If they are fascists, they are very bad at it.
There’s a book specifically written about these fraud politicians in black robes attempting (and often succeeding) to legislate for Democrats from the bench.
It’s obvious WE cannot fix this mess from the Outside>In, Now that Trump is beginning to fix this mess from the Inside<Out, Those whom have no resolve are finding that the insular walls of the system are weak from their own corrosive state. Their Bureaucracy is falling and they know that They will be falling out with it, with no real skills to peddle. The Trump Cabinets hasn't even began to sweep the floor of the D.C. Bureaucracy. There's going to be lots of dust kicked up.
Yes, but there are problems. From J H Kunstler, today. An excerpt:
These are the dynamics faced by the newborn Trump command. Both political parties, per se, have fallen into a dismal habit of racketeering in this sclerotic state-of-empire. But now Mr. Trump has seized control of the Republican apparatus, at least, and the Party’s entrenched ol’ crocs and pythons descry that under DJT the regular feeding frenzy is over. Hence: the hand-wringing over Pete Hegseth setting foot in the Pentagon, as he will sometime this dawning day. The dollars pounded down that rat-hole in this century could have funded start-ups of several empires, but instead the swag just landed in the index funds of countless board members parasitically lodged in a dark cosmos of G.I. procurement circle-jerks. A lot of that can and will be stopped. And the ones who just won’t quit are liable to be found out.
Now, the Democratic Party faces more perplexing quandaries. It, too, is constructed as a gigantic grift machine. But if you subtract the employees of the multitudinous NGOs and non-profit orgs set up in recent years to receive government largess — which have spawned like smelts in the San Joaquin delta — you would eliminate much of the party’s rank-and-file. (The rest are apparently embedded in government itself and the teachers’ union.) A whole lot of activists would lose their platforms for activism in the process.
These crypto-bureaucracies have become the places where the Democratic Party stashes the “elite over-production” of Woked-up Marxian semi-morons from America’s diploma mills — in which orgs they are lavishly paid to conduct the aforementioned propaganda and gaslighting operations that wrecked so many American minds. The funding spigot to many of those is getting shut down. It will result in an employment crunch for a large cohort of professional crybabies. They could possibly adapt to their new circumstances by ceasing to be crybabies, and finding other, more useful things to do. That would portend some very significant cultural shiftings, which might include the death of the Democratic Party as we’ve known it. Or, they could all just join Antifa (if they’re not already in it) and go make trouble in the streets.
The first seven days of Mr. Trump have been sheer razzle-dazzle. He and the people around him have torn through the zeitgeist like front-end-loaders through a homeless encampment. He has yet to meet a crisis. Some of the obvious traps are avoidable. For instance: seeking further injury to Russia as a way of ending the stupid Ukraine war — started by us in 2014, thanks a lot Victoria Nuland & Company — since both the US and Russia are just about unconditionally desirous of stopping the damn thing as soon as possible. It’s had no benefit for anybody but the Raytheon war lobby and the Zelensky regime’s legion of grifters. Mr. Trump’s recent tough talk has been entirely for show, just a mass of rhetorical lube to un-stick the lingering “Joe Biden” stasis in that sad-sack corner of the world.
If crisis awaits, it’s probably lurking in the financial realm, where the operations of debt have put nearly every country on Gawd’s Green Earth behind the eight-ball. There is just too much of it that everybody knows can’t possibly be paid back — or soon even serviced — and the grand managers of these matters are finally out of tricks for pretending things can go on. Nor, here in America, can Mr. Trump cut spending fast enough to rebalance accounts. And if he somehow could, government employment has become such a big piece of the total economy that we would land post-haste in a new great depression That predicament is yet-to-be faced, but hold your breath because it is hard upon us.
https://www.kunstler.com/p/glug-glug
Floyd, thanks for sharing that. I’d like to call out one sentence in particular regarding the Ukraine war:
It’s had no benefit for anybody but the Raytheon war lobby and the Zelensky regime’s legion of grifters.
Also, the American Deep State needs a good first-world enemy, to justify the defense budget. We can’t really use China for that, because they produce most of our stuff. Hence, Russia Russia Russia.
oldmanfromkansas says: It’s had no benefit for anybody but the Raytheon war lobby and the Zelensky regime’s legion of grifters.
As Dr. Thomas Sowell regularly reminds Americans: always be suspicious when somebody wants to tell you just a tiny part of a story – NOT the WHOLE story.
It wasn’t the “Raytheon war lobby” nor the “Zelinsky regime’s legion of grifters” who disarmed Ukraine of their nuclear deterrence by promising Ukraine that in exchange for surrendering their nukes, America committed to Ukraine to be their replacement deterrent and defense against aggression.
That was a Republican president and government who made that commitment of America to Ukraine. Doing so specifically to disarm them of the nukes that terrified that Republican president and government so badly.
And two Democrat presidents in succession who violated that American commitment and allowed two successive invasions of Ukraine while they looked the other way. One of them was the Vice President grifter that became President Bribery Biden.
Both Democrat presidents did so despite Ukraine fighting beside America in our war in Afghanistan and Iraq from the first day to the last, before and AFTER we allowed Putin to invade Ukraine. Nobody said to Ukraine “This is not your war, you weren’t attacked by hajji terrorists, pack up and go home.”
Arguably, America’s word, and commitments we make to other nations in order to get them to give us what we want, no longer have any force nor do they matter. Certainly not when those commitments no longer can give us something after what we already got in the exchange. Now that Ukraine no longer has nukes that terrify us, they’re of no further concern of ours.
Fulfilling your commitments really sucks sometimes, but these days America doesn’t mind doing that.
The costs, including the cost of the corruption in the White House and over in Ukraine, are the cost of refusing to honor the commitments America made to Ukraine.
If you believe there would have been two Putin invasions of Ukraine under Democrat presidents if Ukraine had kept their nukes, or if a president like Trump had been in office fulfilling that commitment we made to Ukraine, change my mind.
Old Airborne Dog
OAD, I believe Putin would have been less likely to invade if Ukraine still had nukes, but nobody really knows for sure.
I also believe the situation has become a vast money laundering operation, particularly as there has been no audit of the $200B to $300B of your and my tax dollars sent there, all the while the Biden crime family mysteriously gets wealthier as on a public servant’s salary.
Floyd – Rome didn’t burn over one night, it took several days and nights.
Trump & Vance have a can-do attitude and the support of the American People, along with ‘some’ Foreigners that admire the U.S..
I think that we are still in the fight. Like Germany in WWII. When Stalingrad happened, it was over for the Germans. Then, Africa was lost that same year IIRC. That was early 1943. But the war went on for two more years.
I think that our country is in 1943 about now. We have a new leader, who is competent to the max, and many people who support him. But we also have an entrenched group of morons, 75 million plus, who in the secrecy of the voting booth, still pulled the lever for Kamala. We have a Federal budget that is $40 trillion overdrawn, and a citizenry that is at least, 1/3 stupid and immoral in a big way. On the bright side, more and more the Legacy Media is not trusted by an overwhelming majority of the country.
The problem is, that to really fix the country, it would take doing things that are not practically possible in a Democracy, sans some severe events happening. For example, executing drug dealers, en masse and regularly, as in Singapore. Or removing the Woke from their positions of power just as Germany was de-Nazified after the war.
We will not even impeach the three horribly partisan judges, above.
most of us certainly share the strong revulsion over what occurred on Jan. 6.
Professor Turley does not have any kind of revulsion, especially strong revulsion, on what these Democrat prosecutors and judges are doing to deprive Americans of their rights through color of law, including to equal justice and treatment before the law.
His expressions of revulsion and staining our constitutional processes is reserved for the trespassers, paraders, and actual rioters who were charged for that three hours on J6. These prosecutors and judges’ actions over YEARS in how they abuse the political office they hold does not sink to meriting the same pejoratives from Professor Turley. They’re merely a wee bit biased… they’re human, after all!
But then, none of the J6 defendants were Professor Turley’s fellow Democrat lawyers. Like FBI Directors Comey and Mueller’s convicted lawyer, Kevin Klinesmith, sentenced for altering exculpatory evidence to be proof of espionage. Klinesmith, licensed by the same bar as Professor Turley was not even disbarred, never mind spend a single day in the cells the J6 defendants spent months and even years in.
How could any American have strong revulsion that the Washington DC Bar Association didn’t take away Klinesmith’s license to practice law after a Washington DC judge refused to sentence him to a single day in jail?
The J6’ers mentioned here are certainly unlike the three judges Professor Turley names in this column: unlike these three judges, not one of them was one of his fellow members of the Washington DC Bar Association.
Democrat Different Double Standards.
The Democrat lawyer version of the old Equal Before The Law, Equal Justice For All.
Old Airborne Dog
So, Democrat lawfare continues.
lets look at the CIA operative working in Ukraine, Ryan Wesley Routh a broke man goes from recruiting for the CIA war in Ukraine, to holding a rifle on a Trump golf course. HOW can a man with NO MONEY accomplish that? BTW his life is scrubbed clean and NO investigation appears to be happening?
The other shooter who appears to have almost ZERO record of a life as well…. no investigation appears to be happening
It is like the DOJ/CIA/FBI wish to hide somethings?
Prof. Turley.
I am sorry, but you are wrong. All the J6 convictions should be pardoned.
You are critical of the judicial process they received above – and THAT alone is why commutations are not sufficient.
NONE of the J6 defendants received fair trials or due process.
The president does not have the power to vacate a conviction and require the Justice department to start over, and the courts up through and including the Supreme court have been too deferential to these lawless prosecutions.
The lawlessness of some protestors on J6 2021 is inconsequential in comparison to the threat possed by the large scale lawlessness of the govenrment in the J6 cases.
Striking a police officer in the midst of a political protest is of minor consequences in comparison to weaponizing prosecutors judges and juries against political enemies.
Not only must these people receive pardons – but the DC bench must be Cleared.
One of your better comments, John Say!
Old Airborne Dog
Thank you John, The whole mess of Lawyers, Judges, DOJ and Jan 6 committee members the did any illegal, unethical or unconstitutional acts about Jan. 6 should not only disbarred but prosecuted for their actions.
First lets figure out who Ray Epps why he wasn’t punished and WHY Pelosi directed weak protection of the capital?
Jonathan does not seem capable of writing a column that does not include a reference to his latest book. We are all aware of his book. Please stop promoting it every day.
Then why don’t you just come here and read his column every two or three days. Please don’t comment on the off-days.
(why do you believe that there are not daily newcomers reading his posts, based on new SUBJECT MATTER or current events/issues and posted in online searches?)
And the kerfuffle over joe’s pre-emptive pardons????
Mehta’s order almost sounds like double jeopardy, at the very least a revisit and alteration of sentencing, which does not sound lawful.
Add that I’m growing increasingly tired of those who continue to declare a “strong revulsion” over J6 because the 2020 federal election was, absolutely “stolen,” rigged, and as we all know, constitutionally unlawful. To suggest otherwise is to insist Americans not believe their lying eyes. Those who do so suggest, do so for fear of encouraging future similar acts. But Americans have a right, indeed a responsibility, to protest unlawful elections, whether they be local, state, or federal. That is not something we’re going to surrender or permit power to deprive or divest us of. A republic if we can keep, well, we cannot keep it if the political class so little regards the wrath of the people.