Donald Trump continues to falsely claim he won the 2020 election and his supporters who attacked the Capitol on January 6, 2021, are “patriots.” Now he’s institutionalizing these falsehoods.
Trump is busily rewriting history and using the power of the Oval Office to turn lies into law. Here are six key methods.
Staffing up with loyalists. Unlike the first time around, Trump 2.0 is populated by people whose primary qualification is loyalty. Candidates interviewing for key positions faced a simple litmus test. They were asked to give yes or no answers to these two questions:
- Was the 2020 presidential election stolen?
- Was January 6 an “inside job” instigated by the FBI or other government entities, not Trump supporters?
Freeing the J6 “patriots.” Trump wasted no time fulfilling one of his key campaign promises. On the day he was inaugurated, he signed an executive order pardoning and freeing all the nearly 1,600 people convicted of crimes during the January 6 insurrection. Trump explained: “This proclamation ends a grave national injustice that has been perpetrated upon the American people over the last four years and begins a process of national reconciliation.”
GOP leaders — including Senate Majority Leader John Thune, House Speaker Mike Johnson and Vice President JD Vance — insisted during the 2024 campaign that pardons should not be given to anyone convicted of violently attacking law enforcement on January 6. But after Trump did just that, all quickly pivoted.
Mike Johnson
“It’s his decision,” said Johnson. “I think what was made clear all along is that peaceful protests and people who engage in that should never be punished. … There was a weaponization of the events.”
The speaker of the House added, “We believe in second chances,” saying redemption was part of his worldview. So far, Johnson has failed to hang a plaque to officers who defended the Capitol on January 6 that was mandated by Congress in 2022.
“We’re not looking backward,” said Thune, who was first elected to the Senate in 2004 thanks to vigorous campaigning by Focus on the Family founder James Dobson.
The Justice Department has deleted the comprehensive database about the cases against the nearly 1,600 people convicted of committing crimes on Jan. 6.
Going after federal investigators and prosecutors. The many crimes committed by many people made the January 6 investigation and prosecution the largest ever in the history of the Department of Justice.
Now, the “good guys” who went after the “bad guys” face retribution for enforcing the law. Hundreds of FBI agents who pursued leads and dozens of federal prosecutors who persuaded juries to convict lawbreakers have been fired or reassigned. The purge of agents began in January. Some agents not fired have been transferred to entry-level positions in hopes they will resign.
Intervening in state cases. The DOJ announced it is reviewing the August conviction of Tina Peters, the Colorado county clerk who opened voting equipment to conspiracy-inclined outsiders after the 2020 election, skipped out on court dates and became a mini-celebrity among those who follow election-denying pillow icon Mike Lindell.
DOJ said it was looking into similar cases “across the nation for abuses of the criminal justice process.” The scrutiny follows Trump’s executive order ending the “weaponization of the federal government.”
“The prior administration and allies throughout the country engaged in an unprecedented, third-world weaponization of prosecutorial power.”
His proclamation explained: “The prior administration and allies throughout the country engaged in an unprecedented, third-world weaponization of prosecutorial power to upend the democratic process. … Therefore, this order sets forth a process to ensure accountability for the previous administration’s weaponization of the federal government against the American people.”
Colorado’s attorney general called the DOJ effort to intervene in the Peters case “a grotesque attempt to weaponize the rule of law.”
Extending J6 pardons to other crimes. Some of the people arrested at the Capitol on January 6 had lengthy criminal records. So far, a federal judge is preventing the Trump administration from extending the pardons to their non-January 6 crimes.
A Kentucky man who was convicted for crimes on January 6 also has been convicted of gun-related crimes. He now claims Trump’s January 6 pardon extends to his other crimes, and Trump’s DOJ is supporting his claim.
So far, a judge has rejected the DOJ’s claim that Trump issued blanket pardons for all crimes committed by January 6 convicts.
Rioters clash with police trying to enter Capitol building through the front doors in Washington, DC on January 6, 2021. Rioters broke windows and breached the Capitol building in an attempt to overthrow the results of the 2020 election. Police used buttons and tear gas grenades to eventually disperse the crowd. Rioters used metal bars and tear gas as well against the police. (Photo by Lev Radin/Sipa USA)(Sipa via AP Images)
Benefitting from Christian supporters. Trump’s institutionalization of J6 lies has the support of Family Research Council’s Tony Perkins, who claims J6 prosecutions were part of a DOJ shift to prosecuting conservative Christians after Trump left office in 2021.
“After that, then you see all the grants and the programs after the J6 investigation,” said a guest on Perkins’s podcast. “They open all of these cases … on grandmothers and people who were strolling by the Capitol.”
Perkins’ guest claimed the phrase “racially motivated violent extremists” was the FBI’s code phrase for “white Christians.”
“Even though … a lot of them are not white, they’re basically Christians, conservatives. And so, the whole department, the agency shifted to that focus,” the guest explained.
The Family Research Council show said Christian conservatives were targeted through “crowdsource policing, basically, in a conservative town like Miami Valley, Ohio.”
There’s no such town.
Related articles:
Trump’s false narrative on January 6 is gaining traction | Analysis by Mark Wingfield
Donald Trump’s January 6 insurrection is now a coup | Opinion by Wendell Griffen
Most Americans oppose Trump’s pardon of January 6 criminals
January 6 anniversary vigil calls for Christians to remember and respond