Political | Process

President Trump pardoned nearly all Jan. 6 defendants at the Oval Office, after promising at his inaugural parade to sign an executive order on the matter. 

Sitting at the Resolute Desk in the Oval Office, Trump signed off on releasing more than 1,500 charged with crimes stemming from the Jan. 6, 2021, attack at the U.S. Capitol. The order requires the Federal Bureau of Prisons to act immediately on receipt of the pardons.

“Tonight I’m going to be signing on the J6 hostages, pardons to get them out,” Trump said at the parade at Capital One Arena in Washington. “I’m going to the Oval Office and we’ll be signing pardons for a lot of people.”

Those pardoned include Enrique Tarrio, the former Proud Boys chairman, who faced a sentence of 22 years in prison for seditious conspiracy. Tarrio’s attorney told the Associated Press he expects Tarrio to face release Monday evening. 

Trump previously promised that he would be “acting very quickly” on his first day in office to pardon to the so-called “hostages.”  

Former Speaker of the House Nancy Pelosi, D-Calif., called Trump’s pardon “shameful,” and said to remember the “courage” of law enforcement “heroes” who “ensured that democracy survived.” 

“The President’s actions are an outrageous insult to our justice system and the heroes who suffered physical scars and emotional trauma as they protected the Capitol, the Congress and the Constitution,” Pelosi, who didn’t attend Trump’s inauguration Monday, said in a statement posted to X, formerly known as Twitter. 

“It is shameful that the President has decided to make one of his top priorities the abandonment and betrayal of police officers who put their lives on the line to stop an attempt to subvert the peaceful transfer of power,” Pelosi said. 

The pardon was one of more than 200 executive orders Trump was expected to sign on Inauguration Day. Other directives he signed on Monday include withdrawing the U.S. from the Paris climate agreement that the U.S. initially entered under former President Barack Obama’s administration in 2015.