DC judges slam Trump pardons as 'revisionist myth,' 'will not change the truth' of Jan. 6

Source: ABC News

January 22, 2025, 3:13 PM


In the days since President Donald Trump handed down pardons and commutations for the more than 1,500 of his supporters who participated in the Jan. 6 attack on the Capitol, federal judges in the U.S. District Court for the District of Columbia have remained essentially silent while signing off on the hundreds of now-dismissed cases that for years crowded their court dockets.

On Wednesday, three judges with the D.C. District Court broke that silence on Trump's pardons of Jan. 6 rioters, with one eviscerating Trump's proclamation that stated he was righting a "national injustice" that occurred through the prosecution of the pro-Trump mob.

"No 'national injustice' occurred here, just as no outcome-determinative election fraud occurred in the 2020 presidential election," Judge Beryl Howell, an appointee of former President Barack Obama, said in an order Wednesday. "No 'process of national reconciliation' can begin when poor losers, whose preferred candidate loses an election, are glorified for disrupting a constitutionally mandated proceeding in Congress and doing so with impunity."

She added, "That merely raises the dangerous specter of future lawless conduct by other poor losers and undermines the rule of law. Yet, this presidential pronouncement of a 'national injustice' is the sole justification provided in the government's motion to dismiss the pending indictment." Judge Colleen Kollar-Kotelly, an appointee of former President Bill Clinton, also made clear in a dismissal order for one Capitol defendant that Trump's sweeping pardons "will not change the truth of what happened on January 6, 2021."

Read more: https://abcnews.go.com/Politics/dc-judges-slam-trump-pardons-revisionist-myth-change/story?id=117986482