How Trump reduced our government to the moral level of a gangster state
Trump’s incoherent revisionist mythology of Jan. 6 has become an organizing policy commitment of his administration. On Inauguration Day, he pardoned or commuted the prison sentences of each of the nearly 1,600 rioters and seditionists (apparently no longer antifa fighters). This move bypassed the U.S. pardon attorney and discarded centuries of understanding that pardons should go to petitioners who have shown true remorse and contrition, rehabilitation and a lack of dangerousness. Consider just a few pardonees:
Daniel Rodriguez repeatedly plunged a stun gun into the neck of Officer Michael Fanone as the mob chanted, “Kill him with his gun.” Officer Fanone suffered a heart attack and traumatic brain injuries. The judge in the case called Mr. Rodriguez a “one-man army of hate” and sentenced him to more than 12 years in prison for attacking Officer Fanone — who was not on duty that day but rushed to the Capitol to help his fellow officers.
Patrick McCaughey III used a stolen police riot shield to crush Officer Daniel Hodges in a metal door frame. Mr. McCaughey left Officer Hodges trapped, bleeding, unable to breathe and crying for help. The judge in this case, a Trump appointee, described Mr. McCaughey as the “poster child for all that was dangerous and appalling” about the riot and sentenced him to more than seven years in prison.
Mr. Trump granted clemency to dozens of people who had committed or been accused of violent and horrific crimes after Jan. 6, such as plotting the murders of F.B.I. agents, resisting arrest, assault, rape, burglary, stalking, stabbing, possession of child sex abuse materials and D.U.I. homicide. One of Mr. Trump’s pardoned Jan. 6 rioters, John Banuelos, bragged in court before the pardons were issued that he would never do time. “President Trump’s going to be in office six months from now, so I’m not worried about it,” he said.
On Oct. 17, 2025, nine months after the mass pardon, police officers arrested Mr. Banuelos on new charges of kidnapping and sexual assault relating to a 2018 incident. He is accused of trapping his victim in his home and beating, strangling and sexually assaulting her.
Mr. Trump punished law enforcement officials en masse for doing their jobs. He conducted a bureaucratic purge — with firings and permanent demotions — of hundreds of experienced F.B.I. agents and federal prosecutors because they investigated and prosecuted the Jan. 6 cases assigned to them. He installed Jan. 6 insurrectionists in the highest ranks of the Department of Justice.
Ed Martin, who leads the Justice Department’s Orwellian new Weaponization Working Group and serves as the U.S. pardon attorney, is a Jan. 6 participant who said he would fight to “stop the steal” until his “last breath.” In a social post, he likened the mayhem at the Capitol to a Mardi Gras celebration. He hired as his senior adviser Jared Wise, another proud Jan. 6-er who repeatedly yelled, “Kill ’em,” as rioters attacked police officers and whose trial on numerous charges had just begun when Mr. Trump pardoned him.
These moves at the Justice Department have cost the government thousands of collective years of investigative and prosecutorial experience, demoralized the civil service and reduced our government to the moral level of a gangster state. [Continue reading…]