Trump pardons roughly 1,500 January 6 Capitol attack defendants and commutes 14 sentences

On January 20, 2025 — the day he returned to office — President Donald Trump signed a proclamation granting a "full, complete and unconditional" pardon to individuals convicted of offenses related to the January 6, 2021, attack on the U.S. Capitol. The order reached roughly 1,500 people, commuted the sentences of 14 others to time served, and directed the Justice Department to dismiss the prosecutions still pending. Trump signed the proclamation at the White House on Monday evening, hours after his second inauguration, and said he hoped those still incarcerated would be released that night.

The clemency was sweeping. The Justice Department's Capitol investigation had charged more than 1,600 people, of whom more than 170 were accused of using a deadly or dangerous weapon against police; the attack itself injured more than 140 officers, one of the largest mass assaults on law enforcement in U.S. history. Among those freed were Enrique Tarrio, the former Proud Boys chairman who had been serving a 22-year sentence, and Stewart Rhodes, the Oath Keepers founder serving 18 years — both convicted of seditious conspiracy for their roles in the attack. Tarrio received a full pardon; Rhodes was one of the 14 whose sentences were commuted. At sentencing, the judge in Rhodes's case had described him as "an ongoing threat and peril to this country ... and to the very fabric of our democracy," and a Trump-appointed federal judge, Carl Nichols, had earlier called the prospect of blanket pardons "beyond frustrating and disappointing."

This action is recorded under pardons-for-allies-or-self. The January 6 defendants acted in support of Trump's own effort to overturn the 2020 election; he campaigned on clemency for them, calling them "patriots" and "hostages." Granting that clemency on his first day in office erased the convictions and pending prosecutions produced by one of the largest criminal investigations in Justice Department history — accountability established through years of investigative work and scores of jury verdicts. The proclamation's pre-conviction component — the directive to dismiss the cases still pending — applies the same clemency intent to defendants not yet tried, and is recorded here as part of the single clemency act rather than as a separate abuse.

Updates

2026-07-06 — Judge held the pardon does not cover pipe-bomb suspect [5, 6]

On July 6, 2026, U.S. District Judge Amir Ali ruled that President Trump's blanket January 6 clemency proclamation does not cover Brian Cole Jr., who is charged with planting two unexploded pipe bombs outside the Republican and Democratic National Committee headquarters the night before the Capitol attack. Ali held that the proclamation is expressly limited to people "convicted of offenses" related to the January 6 events, and that Cole — not charged until December 2025, months after the proclamation issued — fell outside its scope. The ruling narrows the pardon's reach rather than establishing a new abuse.