Get Ready for Trump’s Jan. 6th Pardons
Here’s what happens when an authoritarian pardons paramilitaries.
IN DECEMBER 1924, a special investigation threatened to implicate Benito Mussolini, the prime minister of Italy, in the murder of a political opponent. It seemed possible that he could be impeached and arrested.
A month later during an address to parliament, Mussolini in effect took responsibility for the murder—and then declared himself dictator. “If Fascism has been a criminal association, I am the head of that criminal association,” he shouted.
Mussolini replaced the special prosecutors overseeing the case with loyalists he trusted to whitewash the assassination. He then issued mass pardons, freeing scores of squadristi—members of the paramilitary wing of the National Fascist Party—who would go on to play a decisive role in the consolidation of fascist rule.
President-elect Donald Trump has vowed to pardon those convicted of January 6th–related crimes “in the first hour” of this new term. (It was previously just “Day One.”) Contra those who contend that President Joe Biden invited this abuse of clemency by pardoning his son Hunter last month, as Trump himself has suggested, in fact Trump launched his re-election bid back in 2022 with a promise of January 6th pardons, and the pardons became central to his campaign.
What’s left to speculate about is how far Trump will go. Will he pardon those who assaulted law enforcement? Who dragged officers down the stairs of the Capitol, beat them with baseball bats, or bludgeoned their heads with fire extinguishers? (Trump: “Oh, absolutely, I would.”) What about the organizers of the violence convicted of seditious conspiracy? (Trump: “I’d certainly look at it.”)
PARDONS FOR JANUARY 6TH would mark the first time in U.S. history that the leader of an insurrection pardoned insurrectionists. Globally, though, this brand of clemency is not original.
For authoritarians, placing oneself and one’s supporters above the law is generally the point. But pardons establish a special pact between the pardoner and the pardoned. In her survey of authoritarians across the twentieth century, the historian Ruth Ben-Ghiat observes how pardons are used to “indebt individuals to the leader and make blackmailers, war criminals, and murderers available for service.” Ben-Ghiat means this in the literal sense: authoritarians engaging in a transactional exchange—of escape in exchange for service.
Early in his chancellorship, Adolf Hitler pardoned street-fighting members of the Sturmabteilung (SA), the paramilitary wing of the Nazi Party, who had been convicted of murder. In East Germany after the war, some SA were given pardons if they agreed to spy for the Stasi. Augusto Pinochet of Chile and Alberto Fujimori of Peru used blanket amnesties to protect their security forces. Robert Mugabe of Zimbabwe pardoned hundreds of militants who carried out widespread election-related violence on his behalf. Jair Bolsonaro, regularly at odds with the Brazilian Supreme Court, pardoned a far-right lawmaker who called on supporters to assault its ministers. Katalin Novák, the president of Hungary and a loyalist of authoritarian prime minister Viktor Orbán, pardoned a far-right movement leader who set fire to the homes of Orbán’s political rivals. Recep Tayyip Erdoğan of Turkey has pardoned a bevy of violent allies, including the leader of an ultranationalist paramilitary group. If authoritarianism is in effect a criminal enterprise, as Mussolini conceded, then freeing up convicts can be practically useful. “The violent ones? I need them as well!” he once remarked.
Trump may yet only pardon nonviolent rioters who were at the Capitol that day. Or he might pardon leaders and members of far-right paramilitaries who orchestrated the violence.
Among those angling for a pardon is Enrique Tarrio, the former leader of the Proud Boys, a fascist militant group and arguably the most important organizer of the January 6th siege of the Capitol. (A former associate who testified at Tarrio’s trial said the organization’s members took themselves to be the “foot soldiers of the right.”) Tarrio was convicted of, among other things, seditious conspiracy. Last month, his attorney released a statement “applaud[ing] the recent election results, particularly the election of Donald Trump,” and noted that they “look forward to what the future holds.” An attorney for Joseph Riggs, another convicted Proud Boys leader, was more direct: Riggs, he said, should receive “a complete pardon.”
Researchers at the University of Maryland count more than 50 extremist groups and movements represented at the Capitol that day, though larger groups like the Proud Boys and Oath Keepers accounted for most. In the immediate wake of the insurrection, as the Justice Department’s prosecutions thinned their leadership, group membership plummeted and activities quieted. Many simply collapsed. The Southern Poverty Law Center tallied 52 active militias nationwide last year, down from 92 in 2021.
But they have started to rebuild. Among those rebounding are the Proud Boys, which now boasts 154 chapters in 48 states, according to one estimate, up from 77 in 2023. An investigation by ProPublica found that while the American Patriots Three Percent (AP3)—among the larger militia movements—initially experienced a “fallout” after January 6th, the group’s membership has since “expanded at a dramatic pace, while keeping much of its activity out of view.”
In addition to regrouping, paramilitaries have also adapted. Experts tracking their activity observe a strategic shift to localized operations, like disrupting LGBTQ events, joining book-banning efforts, and organizing white-power demonstrations. “A hard lesson was learned about having a national PB leadership structure after J6,” read one Proud Boy Telegram post reported by the Wall Street Journal. Now, chapters are “conducting local events yet still feeding their lessons learned to the club as a whole.” Experts also caution that decentralization does not imply fracturing. To the contrary, prominent groups are building more expansive coalitions than in the past, and often out in the open, as on Facebook. Leaders like Tarrio and Riggs, if pardoned, would be inheriting an adaptive network of armed vigilantes.
So, too, might Trump. Researchers have described a call-and-response relationship between Trump and paramilitary groups: enough distance to deny a relationship but enough communication to exercise influence. The most infamous example may be Trump’s order to the Proud Boys to “stand back and stand by” during a 2020 presidential debate. Tarrio told congressional investigators that the message, to him, was clear: “I took it to be, like, ‘Hey, the election’s coming up. Stand by.’” According to another convicted Proud Boys leader, membership “tripled” after that debate. Trump’s dangling of pardons has been another example. According to the Justice Department, by promising pardons, Trump is “publicly signaling that the law does not apply to those who act at his urging regardless of the legality of their actions.”
But actual pardons would establish a different relationship. In a sense, Trump has been indebted to groups willing to take up arms on his behalf. In Trump, groups like the Proud Boys see a vehicle for the political project of stomping out pluralism. But many, including Tarrio, were also quick to throw Trump under the bus during their trials, claiming he was to blame for January 6th. Proud Boys founder Gavin McInnes “scoffs” at the idea that Trump “controls them.” But pardons could help to shift the relationship. Pardonees would be indebted to him. And the many more militants not currently behind bars would get the message: If you do something for the cause that gets you in trouble, Trump will protect you.
THE RELATIONSHIP BETWEEN authoritarians and paramilitary organizations is dynamic. The squadristi were not initially wed to Mussolini; some leaders had considered abandoning him as his political fortune teetered. But as Mussolini and the squadristi helped each other to amass power, their political futures became interdependent.
A deepened relationship could be useful to the incoming administration’s priorities and targets. Various paramilitary groups are already operational at the southern border, “rounding up” migrants and turning them over to local authorities. Some coordinate directly with law enforcement. It’s not hard to imagine enhanced coordination in the coming years, including with federal authorities, especially as mass deportations strain government capacity. Nor is it hard to imagine escalating intimidation and violence—directed at Pride events and protests, for example, or at the journalists who cover paramilitary activity—that quiets diversity and dissent. The specter of violence encourages a choice, over time, between civic participation and safety. Most may reasonably choose safety.
In Italy, the squadristi’s work was indispensable to Mussolini. But their militancy was not of the centralized, command-and-control kind. Instead, it was “Italian men who carried out thousands of acts of brutal violence within their own communities,” the historian Michael Ebner documents. Marauding fascists specialized in making “impossible the work of local government,” interrupting meetings and threatening local officials until they resigned. Eventually, they came to dominate local government.
Since January 6th, militants have stepped up their own local campaigns of intimidation, disrupting school board meetings and town council gatherings. Threats and harassment targeting local officials have been steadily rising. More than 600 incidents were recorded in 2024—twice the count of 2022. In the last quarter of 2024, a national survey found that one in three school board members had been insulted, one in six harassed, and one in twelve threatened, precipitating a decrease in a willingness to continue their work. Racial and ethnic minorities and women have borne the brunt. Militants may be realizing, though, that while attacking school boards and town councils affords one kind of power, attaining positions on those same boards and councils affords another.
In 2022, one former paramilitary leader warned congressional investigators that his group intended to get more involved in politics. Experts observe how in recent years, militants “have run for local and state elected offices and signed up as poll workers and precinct chairs.” Bobby Kinch, the national director of the Oath Keepers, wants to “build their political apparatus so that in five or 10 years, conservative candidates would be seeking the Oath Keepers’ endorsement.” Some Proud Boys similarly want the group to become a “political force.” In certain places, they already are. Proud Boys now sit on the Republican Party’s executive committee in Miami-Dade County—where Tarrio will likely return if pardoned.
Pardons welcome their recipients back into society. They absolve them of most consequences, like jailtime and fines—and also restore to them various rights: the right to vote, to own firearms, to serve on a jury, to hold public office. In his testimony before the House January 6th Committee, Tarrio, who previously ran for Congress, expressed how much easier it would be to pursue “what you’ve been preaching for so long from an elected position.” “Kind of an insider strategy?” asked an investigator. “That’s it,” said Tarrio.
 | A guest post by
|