If Trump pardons the Jan. 6 rioters, outraging law enforcers and liberals, there’s a big historical precedent for it: Lincoln pardoned the millions of southerners who rioted against his 1860 election win for four long, bloody years.
In the spring of 1865, as that violent demonstration was wrapping up, a re-elected Lincoln stated in his inaugural speech,
“With malice toward none, with charity for all, with firmness in the right as God gives us to see the right, let us strive … to bind up the nation’s wounds, [and] do all which may achieve and cherish a just and lasting peace among ourselves ….”
Well, that isn’t Trump’s intention. And just six weeks after Lincoln spoke about forgiveness, one of the forgiven shot him in the head, condemning the nation to Reconstruction and the rise of the Ku Klux Klan.
The insurrectionists, it seems, were in no mood to be forgiven. And after Lincoln was murdered, he was no longer there to forgive them. What about the short-lived 2021 insurrection? If you believe what Trump says, and this is probably one of the rare occasions when you can, forgiveness will flow to those rebels as soon as he takes office in January 2025.
No doubt those still inhabiting the “January 6 Wing” of the D.C. jail will gladly accept the “Get Out Of Jail Free” cards Trump will hand out like baseball cards. And many others, their lawyers kicking them under the courtroom table, profusely expressed remorse in hopes of staying out of jail. However phony the remorse, they’ll all eager to be forgiven.
But not so fast. Pardoned is forgiven, not exonerated. A pardoned criminal is still a criminal, and still has a record that will be a red flag on background and security checks. Trump pardons won’t restore them to good standing in the community, and the whole world knows who they are. As Politico says here, “The prosecutions turned it into the best-documented riot in history.”
As a result, whatever happens to their sentences, “we know exactly who did what, and at what time, and with what intent.” And that’s just a fact they’ll have to live with, pardons or no pardons.