Donald Trump’s re-election could be a boon for the Minnesotans prosecuted for joining the mob on Jan. 6, 2021, that stormed the U.S. Capitol seeking to forcibly overturn the presidential election.
Among them are three brothers and a father from Lindstrom, a Minneapolis man convicted of assaulting officers and a Rochester woman who cheered on her fellow rioters as they attacked police who struggled to protect the building.
They’re among more than 1,500 people charged with Capitol riot-related federal crimes, two-thirds of whom have been sentenced to terms ranging from probation or electronic home monitoring up to 22 years in prison. The mob left in its wake more than 100 police officers injured, some critically. Police gunfire killed one rioter inside the Capitol, and three other people died after medical emergencies during the chaos. In the weeks and months that followed, four of the officers who responded to the riot killed themselves.
Trump vowed to undo much of what became the biggest Justice Department investigation in history when he launched his re-election campaign more than a year ago. His first 2024 campaign rally — set in Waco, Texas — featured a rendition of the national anthem recorded by insurrection defendants via jail phone lines and mixed with Trump reciting the Pledge of Allegiance.
As he campaigned this year toward retaking the White House, Trump said numerous times that he would undo what prosecutors and the courts did to those “unbelievable patriots” who stormed the Capitol.
“If I run and if I win, we will treat those people from January 6th fairly,” Trump said in January 2022 during a rally in Conroe, Texas. “And if it requires pardons, we will give them pardons because they are being treated so unfairly.”
“I am inclined to pardon many of them,” Trump also said on his social media platform earlier this year. “I can’t say for every single one, because a couple of them, probably they got out of control.”
Brad Hansen, a federal public defender who has represented three of the Minnesota defendants, said that he hopes the incoming administration “will provide a clear and detailed statement soon as to its plans with these cases.”