TALLAHASSEE, Fla. — Gov. Ron DeSantis promised to consider pardoning the Proud Boys and other Trump supporters who attacked the Capitol on Jan. 6, 2021, or at least commuting their sentences.
During an interview on Newsmax, DeSantis was asked by host Eric Bolling if he would consider pardons or sentence commutations for people prosecuted for the attacks.
DeSantis replied that there were "some examples" of people who should not have been prosecuted, though he did not specifically name any.
"They just walked into the Capitol. If they were BLM, they would not have been prosecuted," DeSantis said, equating Black people who marched in protest of police brutality and systemic racism with people who forcefully pushed through police lines and unlawfully broke into the Capitol with the intention of stopping the transfer of power.
“Then there’s other examples of people that probably did commit misconduct, they may have been violent, but to say it’s an act of terrorism when it was basically a protest that devolved into a riot, to do excessive sentences — you can look at, okay maybe they were guilty, but 22 years if other people that did other things got six months?” DeSantis added.
Different sentences
DeSantis was referring to the sentence of Proud Boys leader Enrique Tarrio, who was sentenced to 22 years in prison after a jury convicted him and three other Proud Boys members of seditious conspiracy, obstructing an official proceeding, conspiracy to prevent an officer from discharging their duties, obstruction of law enforcement during a civil disorder and destruction of government property with value of over $1,000.
Prosecutors at Tarrio's trial showed evidence that he helped organize a chain of command in the days leading up to Jan. 6 as the group prepared and was in close contact with fellow Proud Boys leaders Ethan Nordean and Joseph Biggs as they directly led the mob on the ground attacking police and breaking through the Capitol's doors and windows to stop the certification of the 2020 election results. He also cheered the rioters on.
D.C. District Judge Timothy Kelly said Tarrio was "the ultimate leader, the ultimate person who organized, who was motivated by revolutionary zeal.”
Nordean and Biggs were sentenced to 18 and 17-year prison sentences, respectively on the same charges.
Conversely, Joshua Doolin, a Jan. 6 rioter from Lakeland got 1 year and 6 months in prison for stealing a police riot shield and using it to push back against officers. A judge convicted Doolin of a civil disorder charge along with entering and remaining in a restricted building or grounds, disorderly and disruptive conduct in a restricted building or grounds, and theft of government property.
Standards of justice
DeSantis concluded, “I think we need a single standard of justice, and so we’ll use pardons and commutations as appropriate to ensure that everyone’s treated equally, and as we know, a lot of people with the BLM riots, they didn’t get prosecuted at all.”
As The Associated Press points out, the Black Lives Matter protests and the Jan. 6 break-in were fundamentally different events. The prosecution of people found guilty of intentionally attacking Congress with the goal of overturning a fair and free election is not an apt comparison with a protest movement that happened nationwide in response to systemic racism, even if the protests had infrequent instances of looting or violence.
"Many BLM protesters were responding to the death of George Floyd, a handcuffed Black man who was seen on video gasping for breath as a Minneapolis police officer pressed his knee into Floyd’s neck. Police repelled the demonstrators using rubber bullets, tear gas and military assets like helicopters," the AP article said, "The mob at the Capitol was fueled by baseless conspiracies propagated by Trump that the election was stolen from him through massive fraud. The rioters acted on the president’s direct urging to 'fight like hell.' They attacked police with pipes and chemicals and planted bombs. They were met largely with restraint by law enforcement."
Federal Judge Tanya Chutkan also decried the comparison between BLM protests and the Jan. 6 riot.
"That mob was trying to overthrow the government. … That is no mere protest," Chutkan said.
Chutkan also pointed out that the Jan. 6 defendants weren’t arrested on the spot, were allowed to stay in their home districts, and in many cases were given the option of pleading guilty to a single misdemeanor charge. In fact, many of the Proud Boys were also offered plea bargains with shorter prison sentences than the ones they were ultimately sentenced to.