Trump pardons January 6 defendants

On the evening of 20 January 2025 President Donald J. Trump signed Proclamation 10887, “Granting Pardons and Commutation of Sentences for Certain Offenses Relating to the Events at or Near the United States Capitol on January 6, 2021.”¹ The proclamation grants “a full, complete and unconditional pardon to all other individuals convicted of offenses related to events that occurred at or near the United States Capitol on January 6, 2021,” directs the Attorney General to “pursue dismissal with prejudice to the government of all pending indictments against individuals for their conduct related to” those events, and commutes the sentences of fourteen named individuals convicted of seditious conspiracy or related offences — including Oath Keepers founder Stewart Rhodes — to time served.¹ Proud Boys chairman Enrique Tarrio, who had been sentenced to 22 years for seditious conspiracy, received a full pardon under the blanket clause rather than a commutation.²³ Wire reports of the count diverge: NPR reported approximately 1,500 pardons against 1,583 arrests and 1,270 convictions in the underlying prosecutions; the Associated Press and Reuters reported a higher “nearly 1,600” figure; the proclamation itself states no count and grants the blanket pardon by reference to the class of offences. The underlying prosecution figures derive from the U.S. Attorney’s Office for the District of Columbia case tracker.²⁴

1. Pending federal prosecutions linked to 6 January 2021 are dismissed with prejudice on the government’s motion. The motions are filed under Federal Rule of Criminal Procedure 48(a), which provides that “[t]he government may, with leave of court, dismiss an indictment, information, or complaint.”⁵ Prosecutorial and grand-jury resources allocated to those cases in the District of Columbia become available for other dockets.

2. The Attorney General is directed to ensure the immediate release of individuals currently imprisoned for offences within the proclamation’s scope; the Federal Bureau of Prisons effects release through its standard administrative procedures.¹ Those on supervised release under 18 U.S.C. § 3583 — distinct from probation under 18 U.S.C. § 3561 — are discharged from conditions tied to the pardoned convictions.

3. Civil suits by injured Capitol Police officers and other plaintiffs against individual defendants proceed under tort law; in Smith v. Trump, the U.S. Court of Appeals for the D.C. Circuit held in December 2023 that Trump did not have presidential immunity from those officer suits for actions taken as a candidate.⁶ A presidential pardon, the Supreme Court held in Knote v. United States, 95 U.S. 149, 153–54 (1877), “releases the offender from all disabilities imposed by the offence, and restores to him all his civil rights”; but it does not “affect any rights which have vested in others directly by the execution of the judgment for the offence, or which have been acquired by others whilst that judgment was in force.”⁷