Trump's Opening Act of Contempt for the Constitution

 By Rudy Barnes Jr., January 25, 2025

On Inauguration Day January 20, 2025, President Trump fulfilled his promise to pardon rioters who attacked and desecrated the capitol on January 6, 2021.  Trump’s pardons of the rioters made a mockery of the Constitution that he took an oath to to support and defend--but that assumes that Trump as a convicted felon even took that oath of office.  

There has been pushback to Trump’s pardons from both sides of the aisle, but Trump has stood by his pardons justifying them as “shock and awe” in his campaign to reshape America in his image.  Trump’s pardons make a mockery of law and justice based on loyalty to Trump, but he has always opposed laws that restrict loyalty to himself.

“Most important, the mass pardon sends a message that violating the law in support of Trump and his movement will be rewarded, especially when considered alongside his previous pardons of his advisers. It loudly proclaims, from the nation’s highest office, that the rioters did nothing wrong, and that violence is a perfectly legitimate form of political expression.

Trump used a mass pardon at the beginning of his term to write a false chapter of American history, to erase a crime committed against the foundations of American democracy.  “To open his term with such an act of contempt toward the legal system is audacious, even for Trump, and should send an alarming signal to Democrats and Republicans alike.

At least 20 people who joined the January 6 attack carried firearms onto the Capitol grounds.  Christopher Alberts carried a 9-millimeter pistol with 12 rounds of ammunition and a separate 12-round holster that included hollow-point bullets. He was sentenced to 84 months in prison after a jury convicted him of nine charges, including assaulting law enforcement officers; but he received a full pardon on Monday.

More than 140 police officers were assaulted on June 6, 2021.  One Capitol Police officer was killed, and other officers were seriously injured.  Four later died by suicide.  “Judge Lamberth was appointed by President Reagan to the D.C. District Court in 1987.  He said he had never seen such “meritless justifications of criminal activity” in the political mainstream.”

Lambeth wrote, “I was shocked to see outright falsehoods in the public consciousness, and to watch public figures try to rewrite history, claiming rioters behaved ‘in an orderly fashion” like ordinary tourists, or martyrizing convicted Jan. 6 defendants as ‘political prisoners’ or ‘hostages.’  That kind of misguided rhetoric could undermine the Constitution.

Trump has provoked the danger dreaded by Judge Lambeth, freeing hundreds of people found guilty of participating in a violent assault on the nation’s Capitol — not because they committed no crimes but because they committed their crimes in his name.”   This may be Trump’s opening salvo to undermine the Constitution.  Stay tuned.  There’s likely more to come.

Notes:

The NY Times Editorial Board condemned Trump’s Opening Act of Contempt.  “On Jan. 6, 2021, Philip Sean Grillo, a former Republican district leader in Queens, jumped through a broken window at the U.S. Capitol with a megaphone. He pushed his way past a line of Capitol Police officers and opened the exterior doors of the Rotunda to allow other rioters to enter the building and trash it. “We stormed the Capitol!” he exulted on video, and was seen smoking marijuana and high-fiving other Donald Trump supporters who were fighting the police. “We shut it down! We did it!”  Nearly three years later, a federal jury convicted Mr. Grillo of multiple offenses. But he did not lose heart: Last month, when he was sentenced to a year in prison, he had a special taunt for the federal district judge who sentenced him, Royce Lamberth. “Trump’s going to pardon me anyways,” he yelled at the judge, just before he was handcuffed and led away. He was right. On Monday evening, several hours after President Trump was inaugurated, he fulfilled a promise he had repeatedly made to pardon nearly all the rioters who attacked and desecrated the Capitol in 2021 to prevent Joe Biden’s victory from being certified. Mr. Grillo and about 1,500 other rioters received full pardons from Mr. Trump, while 14 others received commuted sentences.  A presidential pardon for Mr. Grillo not only makes a mockery of his jury’s verdict and of Judge Lamberth’s sentence. Most important, the mass pardon sends a message to the country and the world that violating the law in support of Mr. Trump and his movement will be rewarded. It loudly proclaims from the nation’s highest office that the rioters did nothing wrong; and that violence is a perfectly legitimate form of political expression and that no price need be paid by those who seek to disrupt a sacred constitutional transfer of power.

https://www.nytimes.com/2025/01/20/opinion/trump-jan-6-pardons.html.

In Donald Trump Is Running Riot, David French condemned Trump’s pardons as well as his other early executive orders.  “Trump granted absolution to men and women who violently attacked the seat of American government and tried to foment a rebellion against the lawful, constitutional government of the United States. French also reminded us that in 2021 J.D. Vance said “I think that what Trump should do, like if I was giving him one piece of advice, fire every single midlevel bureaucrat, every civil servant in the administrative state, replace them with our people. And when the courts stop you, stand before the country, like Andrew Jackson did, and say: ‘The chief justice has made his ruling, now let him enforce it.’”  Vance stood by that idea in 2024, and now in 2025 — Trump has fundamentally rebuked the American justice system by ordering the pardon of more than 1,500 people lawfully charged for their role in arguably the most dangerous insurrectionary act since the Civil War.” Trump sent two messages: First, membership in the MAGA movement has its rewards, and one of them is freedom from the law itself. The attack on the Capitol was an act of vicious political violence, and now its shock troops and architects are posing for triumphant pictures and celebrated in MAGA America. To many Americans, Trump made the pardoned insurrectionists heroes, not criminals.  And Vance signaled that Trump could defy the nation’s highest court. Trump has fundamentally rebuked the American justice system with the pardon and release of more than 1,500 people lawfully charged for their role in arguably the most dangerous insurrectionary act since the Civil War. https://www.nytimes.com/2025/01/23/opinion/trump-pardons-bolton-jan-6.html.