Trump’s clemency for Jan. 6 defendants again shines a light on North Texas extremism

From KERA News:

The attack on the U.S. Capitol by supporters of Donald Trump on Jan. 6, 2021, has been described in the media, by lawmakers and by law enforcement as a siege, an insurrection, and a riot.

More than 2,000 people stormed the Capitol that day in response to false allegations of fraud in the 2020 election, the results of which saw Joe Biden defeat then-President Trump by more than 70 electoral votes and with more than 51% of the popular vote.

But Frisco real estate agent Jenna Ryan remembers it as something else: an expression of her First Amendment rights.

“For me, it wasn’t a riot,” Ryan said about Jan. 6 in an interview with KERA News last week. “I think that the media compressed all the information that they received and created a narrative of sorts that portray a riot.”

A bipartisan Senate report disagreed — it laid out in detail the events leading up to the attack, which saw seven deaths and about 140 injuries to law enforcement officers.

Ryan was seen in photos and videos surrounded by thousands storming the Capitol that day, and she livestreamed the event on social media. She pleaded guilty in 2021 to misdemeanor charges and spent 60 days in federal prison.

But Ryan still defends her actions that day.

“To me, it was a protest,” Ryan said. “And I went there to protest election integrity.”

Now, Ryan is one of dozens of North Texans pardoned for her previous conviction.

On his first day in office last week, President Donald Trump pardoned and commuted the sentences of nearly 1,500 defendants found guilty of attacking the Capitol — including those charged with violent crimes, like assaults on police officers.

More than 100 rioters came from Texas, and several from the North Texas region, according to data from the George Washington University Program on Extremism. And experts say that’s no surprise, pointing to a history of prominent extremist groups in the state.

“If you go to Dallas in the 1960s, it was one of the most hateful cities in the country,” said Mitch Roth, a criminal justice professor at Sam Houston State University. “When [former presidents] Kennedy and Johnson were there, you had mobs spitting on them.”

Many Jan. 6 defendants like Ryan took plea deals and faced smaller sentences for nonviolent crimes.

Others, like Stewart Rhodes from Granbury, were convicted of more serious charges, including seditious conspiracy and charges related to breach and assault on law enforcement and the Capitol.

Rhodes, founder of extremist group Oath Keepers, was previously sentenced to 18 years, the longest sentence on a Jan. 6 defendant. He did not respond to requests for comment from KERA News, but told NBC Washington he was released from federal prison late on Inauguration Day and was awaiting the release of others.

“I think it’s a good day for America that all the wrongs are being undone,” Rhodes said. “None of them should have been here in the first place.”

For some, like Roth, indiscriminate mass pardons for the Jan. 6 rioters sets a concerning precedent.

“What this does is it sends a message that it’s okay to be violent against police,” Roth said. “It’s okay to be violent to your government.”

Luke Baumgartner, a research fellow at the George Washington Program on Extremism, agreed, said releasing people convicted of violent offenses on Jan. 6 — like Rhodes — runs the risk of emboldening extremist groups in the future.

“Their leaders are out of prison now, they’ve missed a lot of developments on the outside, and I’m sure some of them are [eager] to get back into the fray,” Baumgartner said.

Despite Dallas being a large, Democratic-leaning city, almost all of the surrounding counties voted conservative in 2020. But comparing data from the 2016 and 2020 elections shows Trump performed worse in every county except one in 2020. Tarrant County, which has the most Jan. 6 defendants in North Texas, saw a nearly 19-point swing.

That shift likely led to surprise and anger from demographics of voters present at the Capitol on Jan. 6, fueling baseless speculation about widespread fraud in 2020, Baumgartner said.

“What’s clear to me from looking at this cross-section of data is that some of these constituents clearly believed the election was stolen,” Baumgartner said, “especially in some of the counties where Trump performed worse in 2020 compared to 2016.”

While some Trump supporters have expressed concern over Trump’s pardons, others refuse to believe any rioters were violent that day despite the evidence, Roth said — calling it a “blind allegiance.”

“I hate to put it like that, but I’ve been around a long time, and I’ve never seen anything like this,” Roth said. “And I think it’s a harbinger for, you know, the future. What the future might hold.”

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