Two wrongs don’t make a right, but… President Donald Trump just pardoned or commuted the sentences of all persons convicted of crimes during the Jan. 6, 2021, Capitol riot.
He also stopped any ongoing prosecutions.
Most of these were fully deserved since they were products of selective and malicious prosecutions of nonviolent offenders.
Unfortunately, despite all the Trump talk of backing the blue and supporting law and order, prominent among the more than 1,500 J6ers that Trump pardoned were those who physically attacked our law enforcement officers.
Sen. Thom Tillis (R-N.C.) criticized Trump’s decision to commute the sentences or pardon a vast swath of Jan. 6 rioters, especially after JD Vance, and even Trump had said that those who were violent wouldn’t get pardons.
“If you beat up a cop, of course you deserve to go to prison,” JD Vance assured us.
“I’m going to do it case-by-case, and if they were nonviolent, I think they’ve been greatly punished,” Trump insisted.
While a distinct minority of the rioters, among those freed by Trump are Devlyn Thompson who attacked a police officer with a metal baton. Robert Palmer bludgeoned another officer with a fire extinguisher on the Capitol steps.
Julian Khater shot pepper spray into the faces of three Capitol Police officers. David Dempsey used all these weapons and more in his frenzied attack on law enforcement.
Also free today are those who were convicted of seditious conspiracy for preparing and planning what became that violent riot.
I have argued and written repeatedly that those truly violent offenders should not have been pardoned.
They are no better than BLM rioters who committed the same violence. However, most of the J6 offenders have already served time, and few BLM rioters ever did. And that is important to note.
After liberal commentators and former Obama officials David Axelrod and Van Jones complained on CNN about Trump’s J6 pardons, Republican strategist Scott Jennings noted, as I have many times, that many Black Lives Matter rioters avoided punishment in 2020.
The violent, fiery and deadly BLM riots that followed the death of George Floyd in police custody in May 2020 killed at least 24 people and caused nearly $1 billion in property damage.
Jennings continued:
Here is what I think. Were these people punished? Yes. Were they ruined financially? Yes. Did they spend time in jail? Yes. Have their lives been ruined? Absolutely,” Jennings said. “And one of you said earlier, Van or Ax, that you think this sends a terrible signal you can get away with things like this. As though we’ve never had a moment in recent American history when people were not punished for rampaging around when it shouldn’t have been. It was in summer of 2020.
“I see that a little bit different than you do,” Jones said, prompting Jennings to respond, “And those people were never even charged.”
Still, as National Review notes: “Both edges of the political spectrum appear to have convinced themselves that the remedy to lax penalties for the other side’s violent rioters is lax penalties for their own.”
Adding: “This is a recipe for more political violence, not less.”
But it’s not just the contrast with how J6 offenders were treated compared to violent BLM rioters that is important.
The reality is, that in this specific instance, Joe Biden opened the door wide for Trump’s sweeping J6 pardons with his own outrageous, unprecedented, expansive and even preemptive, pardons, including of his entire extended crime family.
Just moments before Trump’s swearing-in, Biden pardoned his brother Frank, his other brother James, James’ wife Sara Biden, his sister Valerie Owens and her husband, John Owens, in one of his last acts as president.
This after his sweeping unconditional pardon of his criminal son, Hunter.
But more directly related to Trump’s pardons of violent J6ers, among Biden’s many pardons he granted clemency to the “Waverly Two,” who admitted to the cold-blooded murder of a Sussex County, Virginia police officer in 1998.
“I am beyond outraged and in utter disbelief that President Biden would announce clemency for Ferrone Claiborne and Terence Richardson – two men who admitted to being responsible for brutally killing Officer Allen Gibson, a hero and dedicated servant to our community,” Virginia Governor Glenn Youngkin said in a statement.
“What makes this even more unconscionable is that the Biden U.S. Attorney advised the White House not to commute these sentences as they are violent offenders.”
Thanks to Biden, both killers are set to be released in July.
But they aren’t the only cop killers pardoned by Biden. Biden commuted the life sentence of Leonard Peltier, a far-left activist convicted in the 1975 murders of two FBI special agents, Ronald Williams and Jack Coler, who were gunned down in a shootout in South Dakota.
FBI Director Christopher Wray called clemency ‘wholly unjustified’ for Leonard Peltier, who is expected to be placed on house arrest after prison release.
The move outraged the FBI Agents Association and came days after outgoing Wray sent a letter to Biden urging him not to free the killer.
Biden overruled him.
He also took 37 out of 40 federal inmates off of death row, and his attorney general, Merrick Garland, took the death penalty off the table for a brutal MS-13 gang leader responsible for seven murders.
His two victims, teen high school girls, were massacred with machetes and baseball bats.
None of the J6 offenders pardoned by Trump murdered anyone, much less police officers or FBI agents.
The opinions expressed in this article are those of the author and do not necessarily reflect the positions of American Liberty News.
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Shame on you – There is NO comparison! J6ers were attacked by police FIRST. J6ers didn’t kill anyone. J6ers did outrageous time in worst condition prisons. BLM and Antifa got away with murder…Don’t insult us comparing the two groups. One are patriots and the other are out right criminals that the Left Dems support!!!
ONLY IN AMERICA ??? The issue of any one giving ( PARDONS) is total Crap ! A court, a jury is the instrument too be USED!! But in this ( CASE ) TRUMP , should PARDON all his Family, Himself, all his cabinet members , From this moment on, till they Die. That would be basically what BIG GUY ? or Biden did exactly !!! I want to know ?? how can any one say anything about TRUMP doing the exact thing ?? And not Tar and feather JOE ?? But only reason I can come up with ? Joe being a Dumb —— Donkey , or DEMOCRAP ! Not responsible for HIS actions ! or senile old man ? Trump a White Elephant or REPUBLICAN, who can not FORGET what AMERICA use too be. Does not know the the New Ideology, that ( USE TOO BE IS DEAD ) So Trump is the real problem after all ? Pluss I being being 70 years old, Would be a pick me up if I still could pretend to be a ( FEMALE or FERBIE, or anything goes ? To see some young women FRESHING UP or POWDERING ?? in the LOOOOO. Always wondered about the nose powdering ? If I was snorting drugs or ?? I could think of more PLEASANT and better smelling PLACES. But at 70 ? Just call me ( JOE)!!!!!!!!!!!