The eldest brother grabbed a police officer by the neck, threatened to take away his baton and sprayed an irritating liquid towards a police cordon. The younger brother threw a plastic chair at officers, hitting at least one. With these and other attacks on police, Matthew and Andrew Valentin (32 and 27) helped break barricades around the Capitol in Washington on January 6, 2021.
Even though – unlike many other Trump supporters – they did not enter the parliament itself that day, the justice system caught their eye. On Friday, the Valentin brothers were sentenced to 2.5 years in prison. They were released again on Monday evening.
The Valentins were the first to benefit from the pardon that Donald Trump granted to the stormers of the Capitol in his first hours back in the White House. Nearly all of the more than 1,500 convicted or charged rioters who tried to prevent Joe Biden’s election victory at the beginning of 2021 will be released.
‘Patriots’ and ‘hostages’
By opening the prison gates to this group of supporters, Trump is fulfilling an exciting campaign promise. As a candidate, he already called convicted stormers and rioters “patriots” and “hostages” of the Biden administration. During rallies he repeatedly played the song that the official ‘6J prison choir’ recorded to raise money.
Photos: Kayla Bartkowski/Getty via AFP
But it was a surprise on Monday evening that he would use his presidential pardon power so generously. Republican party members had insisted that rioters who used violence against officers would be exempt from pardons. The Republicans traditionally present themselves as the party of law and order and as a pillar of support for officers, for example when they are accused of (racist) police violence.
During the Capitol riots, not only democracy, but also the police were attacked head-on. A total of 140 officers were injured, and four committed suicide in the aftermath.
Before he took office, Trump’s associates hinted that it would be considered “on a case-by-case basis” who could go free. “Those people have suffered long and hard,” Trump said after his election victory. But, he said immediately afterwards, “there may be a few exceptions. I have to look at that, whether someone was really radical, crazy.”
Also read
Trump is back with a flood of radical decrees
Trump’s intended attorney general, Pam Bondi, was also critically questioned about the issue during her hearing in a Senate committee last week. For example, Republican Senator Thom Tillis stated: “I find it difficult to believe that the President of the US or you look at the facts for which people were convicted who were violent on January 6 and then say: that was just a whim.”
Even Trump’s own Vice President JD Vance stated earlier this month that rioters who had used violence would “of course” not be pardoned. Although he also said that there is sometimes “a bit of a gray area.”
Militia leaders also released
On Monday, his political boss appeared to see the issue entirely in black and white. Anyone who got into legal trouble on January 6 will escape. Not only the approximately 1,270 people who were convicted, more than a thousand of whom pleaded guilty, but also approximately three hundred people who had yet to stand trial.
The pardon also extends to the leaders of far-right militias such as The Proud Boys and Oath Keepers. Although some of them did not commit violence themselves, they were sentenced to the serious offense of sedition – sometimes with terrorism as an aggravating intent – because of their leadership role. According to the justice department, these gangs behaved that day “like Trump’s army.”
Also read
‘If Trump decides to release the Capitol stormers, I will fear for my life’
The president did not pardon twelve of these leaders, which would have completely expunged their convictions. On the other hand, he ‘merely’ canceled their remaining sentences. As a result, they retain their criminal record and do not regain certain civil rights, such as their right to vote and the right to legally own a firearm. But they don’t have to go to jail anymore.
Many convicted rioters had a history of domestic violence, it became apparent during the trials. They were often reported to the authorities by immediate family members or (former) partners. They did not assume that their whacking father or ex would then have to serve such a shorter sentence.
The pardon decision was therefore unpopular with most Americans in advance, as was evident from several polls into the issue at the beginning of this year. More than six in ten respondents opposed the release of already convicted rioters. However, there appeared to be broad support for it among Republican voters: two-thirds of them support the pardon.
With his pardon decision, Trump only serves his own supporters. Just as the majority of Republicans embraced the lie that their candidate lost in 2020 due to voter fraud, many have come to believe in recent years that the Capitol storming was not too bad.
One stroke of the pen
Trump and media supportive of him immediately started downplaying the riots in 2021. Most intruders are said to be “grandmothers” and “day trippers” with no malicious intent, who only took a look after the police “opened the door to them.” Also the conspiracy theory that the storming was a ‘inside job‘ was from anti-fascist demonstrators or the FBI, was considered credible by many.
The riots have prompted the largest judicial investigation in American history over the past four years. A House committee concluded in 2022 after months of public hearings and in-depth investigations that they did not just arise, but were part of a criminal conspiracy plotted for weeks in the White House. With one stroke of the pen, Trump superimposed his own, alternative reading of history on Monday.
Also read
The day American democracy faltered
