If reelected president, Donald Trump would have the authority to pardon anyone convicted of federal crimes in connection the Jan. 6 insurrection.
That group includes the four members of the far-right Proud Boys who were convicted on Thursday for seditious conspiracy for their role in trying to keep the former president in power after he lost the 2020 election.
The extent to which Trump would help those convicted of crimes related to Jan. 6 is an open question, but MSNBC columnist Jordan Rubin notes that an exchange last week between the former president and a woman convicted in the Jan. 6 riot suggests he’d have their backs.
“You guys are gonna be OK,” Trump reportedly told Micki Larson-Olson, who was convicted of a misdemeanor for resisting police efforts to clear the Capitol grounds last week at a New Hampshire campaign rally in which the former president embraced her.
Rubin writes that “Thursday’s seditious conspiracy convictions for several Proud Boys members raises the question: Are they among the “guys” Trump would pardon if he gets another term?”
“Facing decades in prison for attempting to violently overthrow the election in Trump’s favor, they certainly have a case to make for their leader’s loyalty. No doubt, Trump would be tempted to deliver them clemency, if only to provoke the ire of their common enemies. In his first term, Trump doled out pardons and commutations to a murderers’ row of assorted cronies and military members accused of war crimes.”
Rubin notes that notwithstanding public safety considerations, pardoning the Proud Boys would be legal.
“Such a searching philosophical inquiry won’t likely be on Trump’s mind if he’s in the position of considering these pardons,” Rubin writes.
“More likely, the Trumpian calculus would be whether he wants to repay a political debt.
“Banking on Trump to pay up, however, is a dangerous game to play, so his soldiers may have reason to fear they’ll be left on the Jan. 6 battlefield.”
