How the Jan. 6 "Henchmen Pardons" Advance Trump's Bid to Cement His Power
In a new installment of their "Entrenchment" series on the president's authoritarian project, Protect Democracy writers explain the broader significance of clemency for the Capitol insurrectionists
By Grant Tudor and Amanda Carpenter Protect Democracy
On September 5, 2023, Proud Boys leader Henry “Enrique” Tarrio was sentenced to serve 22 years in prison and 36 months supervised release for seditious conspiracy and other charges related to the breach of the United States Capitol on January 6, 2021.
Ultimately, Tarrio served less than two years. On January 20, 2025, as one of his first acts upon taking office, President Donald Trump granted clemency to all January 6 rioters, freeing Tarrio from prison. Issuing mass pardons to the insurrectionists was a top priority for Trump.
Immediately after his release, Tarrio appeared on conspiracy theorist Alex Jones’s program, thanking Trump for “literally giving me my life back.” Tarrio then demanded swift action from the administration to punish those who investigated him, stating, “Success is going to be retribution. We have to ensure the next four years set us up for the next 100 years.”
When invoking the idea of setting “us up for the next 100 years” Tarrio is talking about “entrenchment,” which is how authoritarians consolidate and leverage government power to stay in power.
This piece is part of an ongoing series about Trump’s Entrenchment Agenda that explains how he and his allies seek to dig into office, cement power, and crush electoral competition. Paramilitary forces have historically played a big role in these sorts of politics, and their alliances with authoritarian leaders have dangerous consequences.
History of paramilitary pardons. Any plausible deniability Trump attempted to maintain between himself and those who stormed the Capitol on January 6 evaporated with the mass pardons.
Trump’s act marked the first time in U.S. history that the leader of an insurrection pardoned insurrectionists, putting an American president in the column of other authoritarian leaders around the world who have used pardons to license lawbreaking by paramilitary actors and entrench themselves in office.
Before Trump took office, we warned about this dangerous history in The Bulwark: Get Ready for Trump’s Jan. 6th Pardons
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.
Paramilitary actors who share an ideology with the authoritarian leader often take it upon themselves to act as extralegal enforcers of the leader’s agenda.
The pardon power is a valuable tool for placing paramilitary supporters who do an authoritarian’s bidding above the law. When authoritarians deploy the pardon power this way, it also acts as a license for more law-breaking in other areas. As democracy scholar Rachel Kleinfeld found and predicts:
“Research in Israel, Germany, and the U.S. shows that when political extremists think the government is on their side and they will not be held accountable for violence, they commit more violence. We are likely to see more vigilante action in communities facing immigrant round-ups, more militias along the border trying to “assist” law enforcement, and greater threats inspired by the words of politicians and influencers.”
“Success is retribution.” Trump launched his 2024 re-election campaign on a theme of “retribution,” and the MAGA faction is bound in the belief that merely pardoning violent actors for their participation on January 6 is not enough. They also want to punish those who sought accountability for their roles in the violent attack.
To advance the agenda of entrenching the authoritarian faction into power over the long term — or, as Tarrio put it, “the next 100 years” — the rule of law is being turned upside down to not only free those who attacked the Capitol but to punish those who defended the constitutional order and sought accountability.
Trump has made his intent clear, and his chosen political appointees are well aware of his wishes and vetted for their loyalty to Trump’s vision of a retributive government.
NPR tallied that while campaigning for re-election, Trump made more than 100 threats to prosecute or punish his perceived political enemies, many of those directly associated with the January 6 investigations. Trump’s nominee to lead the FBI, Kash Patel, an election-denying activist who has said January 6 was an “inside job,” raised money for jailed rioters, and wrote an “enemies list,” is pending Senate confirmation.
This posture led Trump to fire prosecutors involved in investigating January 6 and issue a call for the names of FBI agents associated with the case. Assisting Trump in the firings was Ed Martin, whom Trump appointed as the interim D.C. U.S. Attorney. Martin, a former leader of the Missouri Republican Party, previously advocated on behalf of jailed rioters and during the 2020 campaign as a “Stop the Steal” organizer.
The Washington Post reported:
“Since being appointed on Jan. 20, Martin has ordered top supervisors in the office to investigate their colleagues’ handling of the Capitol riot prosecutions in the wake of Trump’s mass pardons and threatened subordinates who disclose or criticize his actions.”
The purges are essential for Trump’s entrenchment agenda, which stretches beyond the January 6 investigations.
On their face, the firings clear the department of anyone seeking accountability for Trump’s role in inciting January 6. But more crucially, by taking direct control over the Department of Justice and eliminating expert staff, Trump is creating room for his loyalists to take their places, shielding him from accountability for future criminal actions.
Rewriting history. Trump’s pardons and purges are not just about absolving his supporters but rewriting history to position them as victims rather than perpetrators.
Trump’s pardon proclamation stated that he was ending “a grave national injustice that has been perpetrated upon the American people over the last four years and begins a process of reconciliation.” And, with those words, Trump effectively wiped out the Department of Justice’s most sprawling investigation in American history, in which approximately 1,583 defendants were federally charged with crimes.
These pardons should also be considered with an executive order Trump issued in his first days in office, Ending the Weaponization of the Federal Government, that was vaguely written but widely interpreted as directives for his appointees to target those associated with January 6 investigations.
For example, the “weaponization” order states, “The prior administration and allies throughout the country engaged in an unprecedented, third-world weaponization of prosecutorial power to upend the democratic process,” notes that the Department of Justice “ruthlessly prosecuted more than 1,500 individuals associated with January 6,” and then empowers the Attorney General and Director of National Intelligence to take “appropriate action.”
In addition to stoking violence, as Trump did with the January 6 rioters, this order is designed to quash dissent and spread disinformation. These are three key authoritarian tactics Trump is deploying to dig into office, cement power, and crush political competition.
Henchmen pardons. Trump’s January 6 pardons do not mark the first time he has demonstrated his willingness to give clemency to violent actors who provided some kind of personal or political benefit to himself.
Protect Democracy tracked and analyzed how Trump deployed the pardon power during his first term in office. Although the trend toward self-serving presidential pardons was not new, Trump supercharged an entirely new class: “henchmen pardons,” which include three types.
Self-Protective Pardons: Used to incentivize associates not to cooperate with investigations, as seen during the Mueller inquiry.
Rewarding Political Allies: Exemplified by Trump’s pardon of Dinesh D’Souza for illegal political activity.
Licensing Violence: Most notably, pardons for Blackwater contractors — who massacred Iraqi civilians — and January 6 rioters.
The January 6 pardons are an escalation of this alarming trend, creating a pact between Trump and insurrectionists. By signaling that political violence will not only be tolerated but rewarded, Trump invites further chaos in pursuit of power.
Shifting the path. In his book, On Tyranny: Twenty Lessons from the Twentieth Century, Timothy Snyder cautions: “When paramilitaries and official forces intermingle under the banner of a leader, the end of democracy is near.”
Yet, history also provides hope. Opposition to authoritarianism has succeeded when individuals, institutions, and movements respond with action.
American activists, for example, who worked in the civil rights movement, were routinely threatened by paramilitary violence from the Ku Klux Klan. Courageous leaders emerged to organize sit-ins and marches. They used the media to show the country the shocking violence that was waged against them in places like Selma and Birmingham. Speakers like Martin Luther King Jr. inspired thousands to join their cause. This helped create momentum for landmark Supreme Court decisions such as Brown v. Board of Education, which declared racial segregation in public schools unconstitutional by a vote of 9-0, and for the Civil Rights Act of 1964, the Voting Rights Act of 1965, and the Fair Housing Act of 1968.
The January 6 pardons could be used to mobilize action, as they have proven to be unpopular and divide members of Trump’s party.
A January 2025 poll commissioned by Protect Democracy United across the 43 most competitive Congressional districts in the country and conducted by YouGov found 75% of Americans oppose pardons for those convicted of using a deadly or dangerous weapon at the Capitol, including 55% of Republicans.
While a president’s pardon power is vast, that does not mean others are helpless.
Illinois Governor JB Pritzker, for example, has moved to block pardon recipients from obtaining state jobs. Members of Congress have introduced legislation to create a federal prohibition against private paramilitary conduct, which includes intimidating government officials, interfering with government proceedings, and training to engage in such behavior. Some state lawmakers have updated outdated laws to address paramilitary activity.
Other pro-democracy organizers are well-positioned to continue appealing to the courts for justice and robustly exercising our democratic right to speak, assemble, organize, and campaign against authoritarian candidates.
Responding to these threats is an urgent task. Trump’s entrenchment agenda, driven by unprecedented abuses of the pardon power, is aimed at intimidating critics and licensing political violence so that opponents can’t dislodge the authoritarian faction from office.
And violent actors, for now, remain confident in their methods.
USA TODAY published a story on February 8 in which staff interviewed four top leaders of the Proud Boys given long prison sentences for their actions on January 6, including Tarrio, who is considering a run for Congress in Matt Gaetz’s former district.
None of them expressed remorse for their actions. When “asked if they were proud of their actions, all four unequivocally told USA TODAY they would do the same thing all over again.”
Grant Tudor is a policy advocate with Protect Democracy, where Amanda Carpenter serves as Editor. You can subscribe to the organization’s “If You Can Keep It” newsletter, which tracks Trump’s authoritarian project, on Substack here.
Image: Pro-Trump thugs attack the Capitol and Capitol Police on Jan. 6, 2021 (National Catholic Register).