Many pardoned Jan. 6 defendants remain angry and press new conspiracies and claims

In the first hours of his second administration, President Trump issued clemency to nearly 1,600 people implicated in the Jan. 6, 2021, attack on the Capitol. Some of those pardoned have since been rearrested, others returned to poverty or continue to struggle with mental health challenges, and many remain consumed by resentment and demands for payback.

The proclamation ended prosecutions related to the riot and, the article says, gave a presidential stamp to an inverted view of Jan. 6 that treats the attackers as victims and prosecutors as villains. Nearly a year after the proclamation’s claim that it had cleared the way for "a process of national reconciliation," many recipients of clemency remain wedded to conspiracy theories and frustrated that the Trump administration has not validated their belief in a deep-state setup.

The debate around who planted pipe bombs outside party headquarters the night before Jan. 6 has intensified those divisions. A right-wing report in The Blaze identified a former Capitol Police officer as a suspect; federal officials later announced the arrest of Brian Cole Jr. at a Justice Department news conference led by Dan Bongino, Kash Patel and Pam Bondi.

Mr. Bongino had previously advanced inside-job theories as a podcaster and later resigned from the F.B.I.; some pardoned rioters called the arrest a patsy case and seized on other inconsistencies, and Mr.

Key Topics

Politics, Donald Trump, United States Capitol, Presidential Pardon, Fbi, Brian Cole Jr