Time and again during his campaign, former and future president Donald Trump made the Jan.6 rioters who stormed the U.S. Capitol a centerpiece of his rallies, calling them heroes or hostages and promising pardons.
“The moment we win,” Trump told a Wisconsin crowd in September, “we will rapidly review the cases of every political prisoner unjustly victimized by the Harris regime, and I will sign their pardons on Day 1.”
Trump is now being asked to deliver.
Norm Pattis, the Connecticut lawyer defending Joseph Biggs, a member of the militant Proud Boys organization that the government says organized the violent break-in at the Capitol, has written a long letter to Trump that appeals to his grievances with the criminal justice system and argues that clemency might contribute to political unification.
“Mr. President, you are no stranger to prosecutions warped by partisan vendetta,” Pattis wrote. “Mr. Biggs also has been victimized by a cynical misuse of the law.”
The letter congratulates Trump on “your re-election to the Presidency” before turning to an exhaustive history of presidential clemency through U.S. history. Pardoning Biggs and other insurrectionists would serve “the broader public interest,” Pattis wrote, in the same way “liberal” grants of presidential pardons to confederates helped reunite the country after the civil war.
“These are divisive times. The divisions were acute in 2020, when millions believed the election was stolen and turned out to make sure electoral integrity was preserved. Suspicions and bitterness about the election lingers to this day. A pardon of Mr. Biggs will help close that wound and inspires confidence in the future” Pattis wrote.
Pattis defended Biggs at his 2023 trial in Washington and is pressing an appeal.
Biggs was one of the leaders of the militant, far-right Proud Boys on Jan. 6, 2021 when thousands of Trump supporters, inflamed by the outgoing president’s claim that the 2020 election was rigged, stormed the Capital in what the Justice Department calls an attempt to block certification of President Joseph Biden’s victory
Since then, in what has been described as the most extensive criminal investigation in U.S. history, more than 1,500 rioters have been charged and more than 600 imprisoned.
Biggs, a U.S. Army veteran from Florida, was charged with a long list of crimes including seditious conspiracy for trying to block the transfer of government power to Biden. He was sentenced to 17 years in prison, but Pattis said federal prosecutors are appealing in an effort to lengthen the sentence and have cut off his military pension because of the sedition conviction.
Biggs is the first Proud Boy to ask Trump for clemency, but others have said they also intend to seek pardons.
The government presented evidence in court that Biggs was part of a Proud Boys “Ministry of Self Defense,” the purpose of which was to “prevent, hinder and delay” the certification of the election results and “oppose by force the authority of the United States.”
The Proud Boys, federal prosecutors said, were “at the forefront of every major breach of the Capitol’s defenses, leading to the on-the-ground efforts to storm the seat of government.”
While Trump promised repeatedly during the campaign to pardon Capitol rioters, neither he nor his transition team have said how he intends to do it.
In his letter, Pattis asks Trump to issue pardons directly rather than relying on the Justice Department pardon attorney, an office Pattis said is characterized by delay and potential bias.:
“No matter how big the shake up at Justice will be come January 2025, the agency has gone all in on the theory that January 6, 2021 was a direct threat to democracy,” Pattis wrote. An agency empowered by hyperbole will with difficulty learn to hear the more subtle message that justice requires.”
“Much is written and has been said about so-called ‘lawfare,’ that is, the targeting of political opponents for legal process by those in power, Pattis wrote. “The Justice Department’s obsession with January 6, 2021, has wasted enormous resources and eroded confidence in the even-handed administration of justice.
“Mr. President, the time for a pardon is past due. We ask you to make the pardon of Mr. Biggs a top priority in your administration,” he wrote.
“We make this appeal directly to you because we believe in the power of justice and the ability of a courageous leader to make a real and sustaining difference in American life.”
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