Pardonable offenses
Indignity Vol. 5, No. 3
THE WORST THING WE READ™
The Wall Street Journal Editorial Board Remembers January 6
FOUR YEARS AGO today—well, you know what happened four years ago today. It's been abstracted down to a date and a point of political debate, but at the time it was very concrete and specific. I was on Slate's politics desk, editing Jim Newell as he reported on Congress' counting of Joe Biden's victory over Donald Trump, and then suddenly Jim was posting video of the interior Capitol doors being pounded on by intruders, and then being sent off to what everyone hoped would be a safe room in the complex. More video was everywhere: vastly outnumbered cops being mauled and battered by swarming attackers, shattered windows, Trump flags, tear gas. It was a coup.
People died on the scene, in the crush of the rioters. Reporters were attacked. A police officer shot one of the besiegers dead as she forced her way into the House chamber through a broken window. The members of Congress hid under their desks and then fled, and Trump supporters seized the space where the electoral college count was supposed to take place, sitting in the legislature's seats, rifling through their papers and possessions. In the days after the horrifying hours-long battle, multiple Capitol Police officers killed themselves.
And then the various efforts to hold Donald Trump to account for the attack failed: Nancy Pelosi demurred on immediately impeaching him; Trump's cabinet refused Pelosi's invitation to remove him under the 25th Amendment instead; in the belated impeachment trial, Republican senators claimed they had no power to convict a president whose term had ended; Biden's Department of Justice slow-walked its efforts to investigate and prosecute him for leading the coup; Trump's Supreme Court majority further stalled the prosecutions and then granted him broad criminal immunity for his actions as president, while separately declaring that the constitution's Insurrection Clause was unenforceable against him.
Now, after Republicans who'd originally denounced the attack lined up behind Trump, he's due to become president again. And among the first things he's said he'll do is issue pardons to the people who were convicted of various crimes they committed while trying to violently overturn his 2020 defeat.
The Wall Street Journal editorial board was very uncomfortable with this news:
Scanning the latest case activity, what jumps out isn’t sympathetic characters. On Dec. 20 a prison sentence of 48 months was given to 31-year-old Joshua Lee Atwood, who pleaded guilty to assaulting law enforcement. He emptied a can of pepper spray at police, beat them with a pole, and pelted them with objects such as a “metal scaffolding pipe.” He yelled that the cops were “pieces of s—” and “betraying your country.” The prosecution’s sentencing memo says his criminal history includes a pending felony case for an alleged 2023 stabbing.
