Washington DC:

At least two people, who were convicted in connection with the US Capitol riots, have “rejected” the pardon issued by President Donald Trump. Jason Riddle and Pamela Hemphill believe their actions on January 6, 2021, were not pardonable and accepting Mr Trump’s clemency would contribute to “propaganda” that the attack “was a peaceful protest”.

Speaking to The Guardian on Thursday, 71-year-old Hemphill said she was taking responsibility for her role in attempting to prevent the certification of former President Joe Biden’s victory over Mr Trump in the 2020 presidential election.

“Accepting Trump’s pardon would contribute to propaganda that [the attack] was a peaceful protest,” she said. Hemphill had received a 60-day misdemeanour prison sentence and three years of probation after pleading guilty in 2022 to illicitly demonstrating, picketing or parading at the Capitol. 

Later on Friday, US Navy veteran Riddle, who received a 90-day prison sentence and was fined $750 in April 2022 for pleading guilty to committing misdemeanours during the attack, also echoed Hemphill’s sentiments and said that rejecting Mr Trump’s pardon would boost his employment prospects moving forward.

“I’m thinking down the road [if] an employer looks in my background, they see misdemeanours… with a presidential pardon – I think that tends to draw more attention,” he told New Hampshire Public Radio (NHPR).

Referring to the president’s “Make America Great Again” slogan, Mr Riddle added, “And I’m sure that’s fine in the Maga world with whoever supports Trump, but I don’t want to spend the rest of my life wondering if [those at] the job I’m applying to … like Trump.”

According to court documents, on 6 January 2021, Mr Riddle entered the US Senate parliamentarian’s office, drank a bottle of wine, stole a book and inflicted damage at the Capitol. 

Looking back, Mr Riddle said, “It’s almost like [Trump] was trying to say it didn’t happen. And it happened. I did those things, and they weren’t pardonable. I don’t want the pardon. And I … reject the pardon.”

Mr Riddle served in the US Navy from 2006 to 2010. He also worked as a corrections officer, restaurant server and mail carrier over the years. Calling himself a recovering alcoholic, Riddle told NHPR he was not in recovery at the time he partook in the Capitol attack.

Recalling the time when he stopped supporting the Republican leader, Mr Riddle said after he got out of prison, he saw Mr Trump asking his supporters to protest when he braced to be charged in a case that involved hush-money payments to adult film actor Stormy Daniels.

“I remember thinking, ‘What are you doing, Trump? Remember what happened at the [Capitol] riot? Someone might get hurt. Why would you ask people to protest,” he said. 

The 2021 Capitol assault followed a fiery speech by then-president Trump to tens of thousands of his supporters near the White House in which he repeated his false claims that he won the 2020 race. He then encouraged the crowd to march on Congress.

Mr Trump was charged with conspiring to overturn the results of the 2020 election. But the case never made it to trial and was dropped following Mr Trump’s November election victory under the Justice Department’s policy of not prosecuting a sitting president.

After he won back the Presidency by defeating Kamala Harris in November, he gave blanket pardons or commutations to 1,500 people charged or convicted in the attack on Congress carried out in his name.

Washington:

Hundreds of Donald Trump supporters who had been serving prison sentences for participating in the Jan. 6, 2021, attack on the U.S. Capitol were freed on Tuesday, after the new president pardoned more than 1,500 people, including some who assaulted police officers.

The Federal Bureau of Prisons said 211 people had been released from federal facilities following Trump’s order.

Trump’s sweeping pardon — which went further than his allies had signaled they expected — drew condemnation from police who battled the mob, their families and lawmakers, including some of the president’s fellow Republicans.

A majority of Americans disapproved of Trump’s decision, a Reuters/Ipsos poll completed on Tuesday found.

Among those released was Stewart Rhodes, the former leader of the far-right Oath Keepers group, who had been serving an 18-year sentence after being found guilty of plotting to use force to prevent Congress from certifying Trump’s 2020 defeat to Joe Biden.

“It’s redemption, but also vindication,” Rhodes told reporters outside the Washington D.C. jail, where a crowd of Trump supporters waited for more prisoners to be released.

Rhodes, who did not enter the Capitol on Jan. 6, said he did not have any regrets and still believed Trump’s false claims that he lost that election due to fraud. Rhodes had been released earlier in the day from a separate facility in Cumberland, Maryland, after Trump commuted his sentence.

Trump ordered clemency for everyone charged in the assault, when a mob of his supporters stormed the Capitol in an unsuccessful effort to overturn his election defeat. Some 140 police officers were injured in the rampage, which sent lawmakers running for their lives.

‘THE MAN WHO KILLED MY BROTHER’

Craig Sicknick, whose brother, Capitol Police Officer Brian Sicknick, was assaulted during the riot and died of multiple strokes the next day, called Trump “pure evil” on Tuesday.

“The man who killed my brother is now president,” he told Reuters.

“My brother died in vain. Everything he did to try to protect the country, to protect the Capitol – why did he bother?” Sicknick said. “What Trump did is despicable, and it proves that the United States no longer has anything that resembles a justice system.”

Trump’s order extended from the people who committed only misdemeanors such as trespassing all the way to those who served as ringleaders for the assault.

Nearly 60% of respondents in the two-day Reuters/Ipsos poll, which was conducted starting immediately after Trump took office on Monday, said he should not pardon all of the Capitol defendants.

One of Trump’s fellow Republicans, Senator Thom Tillis, said sparing rioters who assaulted police sent a wrong message.

“I saw an image today in my news clippings of the people who were crushing that police officer. None of them should get a pardon,” Tillis told Reuters in a hallway interview. “You make this place less safe if you send the signal that police officers could potentially be assaulted and there is no consequence.”

Others welcomed Trump’s decision. Republican Representative Lauren Boebert said she would offer tours of the Capitol to defendants after they are released.

Among those released earlier in the day was Enrique Tarrio, the former leader of the far-right Proud Boys group.

Tarrio was not present at the Capitol on Jan. 6, but was sentenced to 22 years, longer than for any other defendant, after he was convicted of seditious conspiracy for his role in planning the attack.

CAMPAIGN PROMISE

Trump’s pardons went further than many of his allies had signaled. Both Vice President JD Vance and Trump’s attorney general choice Pam Bondi had previously said they believed people who committed violence would not be pardoned.

White House spokesperson Karoline Leavitt defended the pardons, claiming without evidence that many of the convictions were politically motivated.

“President Trump campaigned on this promise,” she said on Fox News. “It should come as no surprise that he delivered on it on Day One.”

More than 1,000 defendants pleaded guilty rather than go to trial, including 327 who pleaded guilty to felonies, according to Justice Department statistics.

One protester, Ashli Babbitt, was shot dead by police during the Jan. 6 riot as she tried to force her way into the House of Representatives chamber. Four officers who responded that day later died by suicide.

Trump’s were not the only pardons on Monday: Outgoing President Joe Biden in his final hours in office pre-emptively pardoned five members of his own family, a move that followed his pardon last year of son Hunter Biden, who had been charged with tax fraud and an illegal firearms purchase.

Republican Senator Susan Collins said both presidents had acted wrongly, calling it a “terrible day for our Justice Department.” Tillis also criticized Biden’s pardons.

Trump’s action shutters the largest investigation in Justice Department history, including more than 300 cases that had still been pending. Prosecutors filed dozens of motions to dismiss cases on Tuesday morning, federal court records showed.

TRIAL COMES TO ABRUPT END

In Washington, the trial of Kenneth Fuller and his son Caleb, who faced felony charges of obstructing police during a civil disorder, came to an abrupt end on Tuesday.

Federal judges in Washington – including some Trump appointees – have handled Capitol riot cases for years and expressed alarm at the events of the day. At a November hearing, Trump-nominated U.S. District Judge Carl Nichols said a blanket Jan. 6 pardon would be “beyond frustrating or disappointing,” according to a court transcript.

The judge presiding over the Fullers’ trial, Colleen Kollar-Kotelly, ordered it dismissed without discussion, noting that her ruling satisfied what she called Trump’s edict.

Speaking to reporters afterward, Caleb Fuller, 22, said that he and his parents popped a bottle of champagne in their hotel room after hearing Trump’s decision on Monday night.

Fuller said he didn’t witness any violence during the riot.

“I didn’t see anyone get hurt,” he said. “So I feel like everyone that was around me is deserving of a pardon.”   

(Except for the headline, this story has not been edited by NDTV staff and is published from a syndicated feed.)

A sweeping deportation program, ending “transgender lunacy,” “drill, baby, drill,” and peace for Ukraine: President-elect Donald Trump has vowed to move big and fast when he returns to the White House on Monday.

Here is a look at his sensational but frequently vague promises for a second term — much of them likely to be enacted through executive orders.

Immigration

Trump promises a hardline stance against an estimated 11 million undocumented migrants in the United States.

“When I am reelected, we will begin… the largest deportation operation in American history,” the Republican billionaire said on the campaign trail.

He also vowed to end birthright citizenship, calling it “ridiculous.”

To achieve those goals, Trump is weighing declaring a national emergency, which would allow him to unlock Pentagon resources.

Analysts also expect him to issue executive orders on other aspects of immigration policy, including possibly to terminate an app used by migrants hoping to petition for asylum.

However, birthright citizenship is guaranteed by the US Constitution, and any deportation program will face legal challenges as well as potential refusals by some countries to accept deportees.

Trade wars?

Trump has vowed to slap a 25 percent tariff on goods imported from Mexico and Canada — top US trading partners — as punishment for what he says is their failure to stem the flow of drugs and undocumented migrants into the United States.

But is Trump really ready to unleash a trade war with US neighbors, rupturing a North American free trade agreement? Some see this — and an even more provocative suggestion that Canada should be absorbed into the United States — as pre-negotiation bluster.

Beijing should also buckle up.

Trump has threatened to impose a 10 percent tariff on Chinese products, adding to existing tariffs that date back to his first term. Trump accuses China of allowing the chemical components used to make fentanyl.

January 6 pardons?

The president-elect has suggested he might pardon some or all of the people involved in the January 6, 2021 riot at the US Capitol, when his supporters tried to overthrow the 2020 election in which he lost to Democrat Joe Biden.

Trump has described them as “hostages” and “political prisoners” and said that he will be “making major pardons” in connection with the incident, but it remains unclear how he might differentiate cases involving violence against police officers.

More than 1,500 people have been charged with federal crimes in the deadly assault, and more than 1,100 of them have been sentenced.

Wars and diplomacy

Trump warned that “all hell will break out in the Middle East” if Hamas does not release Israeli hostages before his inauguration — and promptly took credit when a ceasefire and hostage release deal negotiated by the Biden Administration was announced Wednesday.

Trump also says he intends to quickly end Russia’s war against Ukraine, though it is unclear when or how he plans to do that.

After promising over the summer to end the nearly three-year conflict “in 24 hours,” Trump more recently suggested a timeline of several months.

Climate

Climate skeptic Trump has promised to “drill, baby, drill” for oil and gas.

He plans to repeal some of Biden’s key climate policies, such as tax credits for electric vehicles, which are meant to encourage a transition to a green economy.

Trump also wants to boost offshore drilling, though he might need to secure congressional support to do that. Biden has selected swaths of ocean as protected no-drill areas.

Transgender rights and race

“With the stroke of my pen on day one, we’re going to stop the transgender lunacy,” Trump said in December, vowing to “end child sexual mutilation, get transgender out of the military and out of our elementary schools and middle schools and high schools.”

He also said the US government would recognize only two genders, male and female.

Also among his plans is cutting federal funding to schools that have adopted “critical race theory,” an approach that looks at US history through the lens of racism.

(This story has not been edited by NDTV staff and is auto-generated from a syndicated feed.)