We’re talking about a President who is a convicted felon himself….
This is NOT about just Democratic appointed Federeal judges….
Some of these people are still being sentenced in on going criminal cases….
Would Trump pardon them all?
Would Trump trell his incoming Attorney General to drop any case still in the system?
Would the signal from Trump be anyone on ‘his side’ can do a violent protest on Federal peopoerty and NOT have to worry about an arrest?
Does Biden have to pardon the Federal cops and prosocutors because they did their jobs to uphold the ‘law’ and now Trump feels it’s ‘his’ law that counts ..Not the ‘Government’ ones in the books?
U.S. District Judge Tanya Chutkan says she has often reassured police officers traumatized by the violence of Jan. 6, 2021, that “the rule of law still applies.”
But as President-elect Donald Trump — once a defendant in Chutkan’s very court — prepares to retake the White House and pardon many Jan. 6 perpetrators, Chutkan now says, “I’m not sure I can do that very convincingly these days.”
Chutkan’s comments, delivered this week as she sentenced another member of the Jan. 6 mob to eight months in prison, are emblematic of the increasing alarm and dismay expressed by federal judges in Washington, D.C., at the likelihood Trump will grant clemency to people they view as responsible for a grave crime against democracy.
In extraordinary but little-watched court proceedings since Election Day, judges appointed by presidents of both parties have emphasized the need for accountability for the people who stormed the Capitol in an attempt to derail the certification of Joe Biden’s 2020 victory. These judges have sounded dire warnings about the fate of the country if the lessons of the 2020 election go unlearned, and they are bluntly bracing for a turbulent start to the second Trump presidency.
One Trump-appointed judge has already warned the incoming president against a “blanket pardon” for Jan. 6 offenders. A judge appointed by Barack Obama said Wednesday that any effort to absolve a former leader of the Oath Keepers, Jan. 6 ringleader Stewart Rhodes, would be “frightening.” Rhodes is currently serving an 18-year prison sentence for seditious conspiracy, but Trump will have the power to wipe away that sentence on his first day back in office.
The judges’ clarion calls are becoming markedly more frequent and pointed as Trump’s inauguration nears. Since his 2024 victory, the federal trial courts in Washington have largely plowed ahead with Jan. 6 cases, even as defendants have tried to delay their cases by citing the possibility that Trump will soon pardon them. Judges have emphasized that his pardon power has no relationship to their obligation to mete out justice, and they have ignored, in Chutkan’s words, “whatever happens outside this courthouse door.”
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