Nearly a year into his second term, Trump has cleaned house at the Department of Justice and FBI, expelling many of those who investigated and prosecuted insurrectionists—and even those who accurately described the insurrection as a “mob of rioters.”
But with few, if any, deep-state Democrats left to blame, some of the most conspiracy-minded types aimed their anger at Attorney General Pam Bondi and FBI Director Kash Patel for not proving that a vast conspiracy kept Trump from victory in 2020. The fact that not even Bondi and Patel, devout believers in the Big Lie, can get this done highlights that, in the words of Gertrude Stein, “There’s no there there.”
So, if the insurrectionists can’t have their alternate reality, what do they want instead? Money, of course. They’d like reparations from the government, paid for by your tax dollars, all because they were duly investigated and prosecuted with the full panoply of due process. Helming this effort are Mark McCloskey—one half of the St. Louis couple who pulled guns on Black Lives Matter protesters—and Ed Martin, the current pardons attorney who formerly represented Jan. 6 defendants.
Trump has made noises about giving the rioters money in the past, but he has gone a bit quiet in favor of demanding the DOJ give him $230 million because he was briefly prosecuted before the Supreme Court granted him sweeping immunity.
Still, the family of Ashli Babbitt—the rioter killed by Capitol police when she charged in the direction of evacuating lawmakers—got a cool $5 million from the DOJ with no real effort, so when do the rest of these folks get theirs, huh?
Nevertheless, maybe escaping consequences for their criminal actions might inspire these folks to straighten up and fly right? Yeah, no. At least 33 of those pardoned have been arrested, charged, or sentenced for other crimes, including child sex crimes. One pardoned rioter, Christopher Moynihan, was recently charged with threatening to kill House Minority Leader Hakeem Jeffries.
Several rioters seem to think a presidential pardon covers everything they have ever done and will do, a thought no doubt bolstered by Trump re-pardoning an insurrectionist for an unrelated gun charge. And while Trump hasn’t re-pardoned the guy who plotted to assassinate multiple federal agents, give it time.
The rioters also continue to promote the contradictory ideas that the Capitol siege was both a proud and patriotic stand against tyranny, and also nefariously manufactured by federal agents in the crowd. Logic is not a strong suit with this group.
A normal DOJ would not entertain any of this, but this is no normal DOJ, so we have the head of the Civil Rights Division screeching online about how the DOJ is “working to bring to justice those who weaponized” Jan. 6, and tenderly assuring the violent insurrectionists that “[n]o statute of limitations” will hinder her efforts. Great to have a high-level DOJ official saying they will disregard the law in order to best reward people who engaged in a treasonous assault on the seat of American democracy.
In the end, nothing that the Jan. 6 rioters are given will ever be enough—because nothing will ever be enough for Trump. They all want more money, more revenge, and more unfettered freedom to commit whatever crimes they want.
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