Former President Donald Trump has called for releasing everyone arrested for the Jan. 6 insurrection last year at the Capitol.
That would presumably include people like defendant Albuquerque Cosper Head, sentenced last month to 7 1/2 years in prison for assaulting then-Metropolitan Police Officer Michael Fanone and dragging him into the mob, where he was viciously beaten, threatened with his weapon and attacked with a stun gun.
“Let them all go now!” Trump said in a post on Truth Social Friday, declaring that it was time to “start treating Jan. 6 protesters fairly.”
Trump said in June at a Faith and Freedom Coalition event in Nashville, Tennessee, that he would “very, very seriously consider” pardoning Jan. 6 defendants if he’s reelected, claiming they had been treated “unfairly.”
“If I become president someday … I will be looking at them very, very seriously for pardons,” Trump said.
Trump also claimed in a radio interview in September that he has been financially supporting some Jan. 6 defendants, whom he called “incredible.” He emphasized again that he would look “very favorably” at “full pardons with an apology” for them if he becomes president again.
Trump called for the release of Jan. 6 inmates in a lengthy post gloating about the acquittal of billionaire pal Tom Barrack, an informal campaign adviser and chair of his 2017 inaugural committee, on charges that Barrack was working as an unregistered agent of the United Arab Emirates. Trump said the acquittal “greatly set the Radical Left back” and “could be the beginning of our breakaway from Communism.”
Trump also called in the post for the release of Catherine Englebrecht and Gregg Phillips, leaders of the right-wing conspiracy group True the Vote, who were jailed early this week in Texas for contempt of court when they refused to provide details of their activities in a civil suit.
The Department of Justice announced Friday that more than 880 people had been arrested in nearly all 50 states for crimes related to the breach of the U.S. Capitol aimed at overturning the certification of Joe Biden’s presidential victory. More than 270 individuals were charged with “assaulting or impeding law enforcement,” the statement noted.
