Since Donald Trump’s decisive reelection victory in November, there’s been renewed hope from inmates accused and convicted of participating in the January 6, 2021, attack on the U.S. Capitol attack that they could receive a pardon.
In the weeks since Trump’s reelection bid, Scripps News spent a couple of evenings outside of the D.C. Jail in the area known as the “Freedom Corner," where every night for the last two years, a vigil has been held in support of those participants who are now being held inside.
Among the vigil attendees was Brandon Fellows, a January 6 participant convicted of trespassing and disorderly conduct. Fellows spent nearly 36 months behind bars, many of those in the so-called “Patriot Wing,” a section of the D.C. Jail housing January 6 defendants.
“I was expecting to come in to cheers, but instead it was just overall happy people,” Fellows said, describing when he first entered the jail. “And instead of the cheers, they gave you a whole bunch of commissary. They're giving you food, they're giving you blankets, they're giving you spare clothes. They're telling you about their story. They're asking you about your story. Hey, why are you in here? What side of the Capitol were you on? Stuff like that.”
Fellows was released on May 20, 2024, and now lives in Washington D.C. He told Scripps News he's attended the vigil almost every night for the past couple of months.
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“I like to show support for them,” Fellows said. "And also, if, for instance, a news crew comes, there's no other January 6th defendants to speak here.”
While Fellows was the only January 6 defendant physically at the vigil on the night Scripps News visited, its organizers have found a way to communicate with those who are behind bars. Every night, inmates call the phones of organizers and their conversations are amplified by a microphone and livestreamed on social media.
During one of those calls, Scripps News was able to speak with Jonathan Pollock and Joseph Hutchinson, who are currently awaiting trial. Pollock and Hutchinson are both accused of assaulting and punching police officers on January 6. We asked if they thought Trump would pardon them.
“I'll be honest with you. It's not really that big of a worry right now,” Pollock said. “I know he's got so much he's dealing with, with the presidency coming up and so much to get back in order. And so, I'm really not just, you know, counting on the pardon right now. He cares about it. He knows what we did that day. He stood for what was right."
“It would be such a happy day if we did get pardoned,” Pollock added. “But, you know, he's got to make that decision.”
When asked if they thought Trump would issue pardons on a case-by-case basis, or if they thought he should pardon everyone, Hutchinson said, “There's no doubt that I believe J6ers are going to be pardoned no matter what their charges are. They're getting let out of here. He may go case by case because each one’s different.”
The number of pardons would be dramatic. More than 1,500 people have been federally charged in what has become the largest FBI investigation in history. Those charges range from destruction of government property to assault and seditious conspiracy. Among the accused, 169 have been charged with using a deadly or dangerous weapon or causing serious bodily injury to an officer. In a recent interview on NBC’s “Meet the Press”, Trump reiterated that he is considering pardoning rioters on the first day of his administration.
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The Supreme Court has held that accepting a pardon implies an acceptance of guilt. Some experts disagree on the legal interpretation, but in a sit-down interview with Scripps News, Fellows said that gives him pause when considering whether to accept one.
Fellows claims that he did not know he was trespassing on restricted grounds and that Capitol police were allowing people inside the building.
“I don't want to admit guilt because I didn't know I was breaking the law. They told me I wasn't,” Fellows said. “So, as cool as having a presidential pardon would be, I've been increasingly in the past week thinking, yeah, I'm not gonna put in for that.”
Presidential pardon powers are fairly broad, but this use of pardon power would be unique, according to elections expert and former Department of Justice attorney David Becker.
“I can honestly say I'm not aware of any similar situation in history,” Becker said. “There certainly have been circumstances where a classification of crimes have been pardoned, things like minor incidents of drug possession, for instance, or perhaps civil rights violations or something like that. But I think it'd be relatively unique in this circumstance. You've got a thousand people who took part in a crime that was videoed, that we all watched in real time unfold.”
When Scripps News asked Fellows if he had ever wavered in his belief that the 2020 election was stolen – or that this may be a conspiracy or disinformation, he said that his beliefs were really solidified in 2022 when he watched the midterm elections in Maricopa County, Arizona.
“Then election night happens, their midterms, and all their printers go out, and they know Republicans show up in person, and then they say, ‘Oh no hours long of a printer issue...We didn't we didn't do that. That doesn't affect the vote whatsoever,’” he says, referencing printer issues that the county experienced that day. Election officials maintain that the issue did not prevent voters from lawfully casting ballots.
He also reiterated, falsely: “I'd say at that point, it kind of became clear and convincing. But the ultimate thing was the Twitter files for me. The Twitter files and how and what, you know, the things that were released with that, seeing how they suppress these stories, seeing how when they did studies to see how many people, even if you believe the votes, how that would have swayed voters, especially independents. That for me was like, okay, now I believe.”
This false claim fueled the January 6 attack and led to threats and harassment against election workers and officials across the country. Becker worries the January 6th pardons may downplay the damage caused in the last four years to American’s faith in the electoral process – and accountability.
“I think the false claim that the 2020 election was stolen was dealt a very harsh blow by the success of the 2024 election,” Becker said. “This has always been a lie, and I fear that the January 6th potential pardons won't necessarily have an effect on people's belief in the Big Lie from 2020 or not. But it will deal a pretty dangerous blow to the concept of accountability around those lies.”
