George Washington University law professor Jonathan Turley said Tuesday that the cruel way former President Joe Biden’s Department of Justice (DOJ) handled the cases of Jan. 6, 2021, Capitol rioters provided justification for President Donald Trump’s decision to pardon them on Monday.
Biden’s DOJ prosecuted over 1,200 individuals from nearly every state in connection with the riot and a D.C. Circuit Court of Appeals panel found in March 2024 that some defendants experienced a wrongful extension of their sentences. Turley, on “America’s Newsroom,” suggested that while he had wanted accountability for those “responsible for the riot,” the DOJ’s overreach made Trump’s pardons reasonable.
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“The Department of Justice really made the case for these pardons, and it was hard to do because most of us supported the people responsible for the riot being held accountable. It was a terrible day,” Turley said. “But the Justice Department unleashed what one of its top lawyers called a shock and awe campaign and they just scooped up hundreds of people. They often demanded really excessive sentences in my view. Most of these people were charged with just trespass or unlawful entry. Most of them were not violent. The government tended to oppose bail.”
“They kept a number of them for a very long time in segregation. In some cases, they demanded limitations on what people could say or read or associate after they were released. All of this tended to undermine their case,” he continued. “And so when when the president campaigned on this issue, I think a lot of people wanted to see this chapter closed. And he certainly did that. I mean, this was broader than most people expected or even asked for.”
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Even Democratic Massachusetts Sen. Elizabeth Warren and Democratic Illinois Sen. Dick Durbin criticized the use of solitary confinement for Jan. 6 defendants ahead of their trials, Politico reported in April 2021.
Moreover, CNN anchor Kasie Hunt reported Monday that Democrats believed it would be “harder to criticize” Trump for the pardons he issues during his presidency following Biden preemptively granting several of his family members clemency on his final day as president.
“Doing this with his own family at this 11th hour, is clearly, at least in the minds of the Democrats I’m talking to, going to make it even harder to criticize Donald Trump for using the pardon power because of what Joe Biden did on his way out the door,” Hunt said.
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First published by the Daily Caller News Foundation.