Jan. 6 Judges Let Out A Collective Primal Scream Over Trump Pardons

A lot of things happened. Here are some of the things. This is TPM’s Morning Memo. Sign up for the email version.

Appealing To History

In blistering court orders, three separate federal judges in Washington, D.C., with an eye toward history decried the dismissals of Jan. 6 cases in the wake of President Trump’s sweeping pardons of those convicted for the attack on the Capitol.

In each instance, the judges were being asked by the Trump Justice Department to dismiss still pending cases against Jan. 6 defendants, a result of a direct order from Trump that squarely flies in the face of decades of DOJ independence.

U.S. District Judge Tanya Chutkan, who most famously handled the now-dismissed Jan. 6 case against Trump himself, issued a brief order in another case that tersely refused to whitewash the record:

[N]o pardon can change the tragic truth of what happened on January 6, 2021. … And it cannot repair the jagged breach in America’s sacred tradition of peacefully transitioning power. In hundreds of cases like this one over the past four years, judges in this district have administered justice without fear or favor. The historical record established by those proceedings must stand, unmoved by political winds, as a testament and as a warning.

A pained U.S. District Judge Colleen Kollar-Kotelly, asked to dismiss a Jan. 6 after conviction but before sentencing, wrote that history will ultimately judge:

Dismissal of charges, pardons after convictions, and commutations of sentences will not change the truth of what happened on January 6, 2021. What occurred that day is preserved for the future through thousands of contemporaneous videos, transcripts of trials, jury verdicts, and judicial opinions analyzing and recounting the evidence through a neutral lens. Those records are immutable and represent the truth, no matter how the events of January 6 are described by those charged or their allies.

U.S. District Judge Beryl A. Howell was breathing fire in her order, tolerating neither the Big Lie nor the subsequent historical revisionism:

No “national injustice” occurred here, just as no outcome-determinative election fraud occurred in the 2020 presidential election. No “process of national reconciliation” can begin when poor losers, whose preferred candidate loses an election, are glorified for disrupting a constitutionally mandated proceeding in Congress and doing so with impunity. That merely raises the dangerous specter of future lawless conduct by other poor losers and undermines the rule of law.

In all three instances, the judges had no choice under the law but to grant the dismissals.

Stewart Rhodes Revisits The Scene Of The Crime

Oath Keepers founder Stewart Rhodes was back on Capitol Hill within hours of Trump’s pardon and his release from prison for seditious conspiracy. Rhodes and Enrique Tarrio of the Proud Boys, who was also pardoned and released, each called for retribution against those who prosecuted them.

Quote Of The Day

“I went through four years of hell by this scum that we had to deal with. I went through four years of hell. I spent millions of dollars on legal fees and I won, but I did it the hard way. It’s really hard to say that they shouldn’t have to go through it also.”–President Donald Trump, threatening retribution for his criminal prosecutions, in an interview with Fox News’ Sean Hannity

House GOP Wants To Investigate Everything But Jan. 6

In announcing the creation of a bogus new Jan. 6 committee to investigate the legit old Jan. 6 committee, Speaker Mike Johnson (R-LA) more or less gave up the game, saying it would probe “the events preceding and following January 6″– but apparently not Jan. 6 itself. (h/t ‪@ericcolumbus.bsky.social‬)

Trump II Destruction Watch

• Trump hits NIH with “devastating” freezes on meetings, travel, communications, and hiring.
• Trump administration orders health agencies to halt all external communications.
• Trump cripples Privacy and Civil Liberties Oversight Board.
• National security adviser Mike Waltz sent home dozens of National Security Council staffers, the non-political experts who advise the President.
• DOJ orders its civil rights division to halt its investigative activity and not pursue new indictments, cases or settlements, according to a memo obtained by WaPo.

DEI Crackdown Comes With Threat Of Retaliation

As the Trump administration shut down DEI initiatives across the federal government, it also threatened employees with adverse consequences if they didn’t report any concealed, hidden, or relabeled DEI activity within 10 days.

More Than Just DEI

In addition to the DEI crackdown, Trump’s revoked an LBJ-era order that sought to combat workplace discrimination and promote affirmative action among federal contractors.

It’s Not About Immigration. It’s About Othering.

• In new memo, DOJ threatens to prosecute state and local officials who refuse to enforce Trump’s hard-line anti-immigration policies.
• In a move echoing decades of racist tropes, the Trump administration is denying asylum seekers access to the United States on the flimsy grounds that they have passed through countries where communicable diseases are present, according to a U.S. Customs and Border Protection briefing document obtained by WaPo.
• The Trump administration is giving deportation powers to the ATF, DEA, and the U.S. Marshals Service, according to an internal memo seen by the WSJ.

Trump II Clown Show

• Ed Martin, the Missouri Republican installed as U.S. attorney in Washington, D.C. to end the Jan. 6 prosecutions, has spent the past several years outside of government pushing for exactly that.
• Tulsi Gabbard‘s nomination as DNI is on shaky ground.
• Media Research Center founder L. Brent Bozell III — a nephew of William F. Buckley, Jr., and the father of a convicted Jan. 6 rioter — is President Trump’s pick to run the U.S. Agency for Global Media, which oversees, among other things, Voice of America, where Trump wants to install election denier Kari Lake.
• The WaPo’s Aaron Blake parses the latest allegations against Pete Hegseth, from his brother’s ex-wife.
• The Bulwark: What Kash Patel Doesn’t Want the Senate to Know About the ‘J6 Prison Choir’

Coast Guard Officially Calls It ‘Gulf of America’

After President Trump fired the head of the Coast Guard, its new acting commandant issued a statement dutifully adopting the jingoistic “Gulf of America” moniker.

(Ed. Note: A Gulf Coast friend wryly suggested that the Gulf of America is the wealth gap, and I can’t unthink that every time I see it. You’re welcome.)

Not Off To A Good Start

Amid Democratic disunity in both chambers, the House gave final passage to the anti-immigration Laken Riley Act, which now heads to President Trump signature.

Senate Dems Gum Up The Works A Little

• “Senate Republicans had hoped to rush through confirmation of a flurry of Cabinet nominees in the days immediately after President Trump assumed office. But Democrats, expressing reservations about some picks, are slowing the push, frustrating Republicans and denying the new president the quick action he demanded.”–NYT
• “Senate Democrats blocked a Republican-written bill on Wednesday that could subject some doctors who perform abortions to criminal penalties, thwarting the G.O.P.’s first attempt to restrict reproductive rights since the party has secured its governing trifecta.”–NYT

Creeping Reactionism

• A Milwaukee TV weather forecaster has been fired after she criticized Elon Musk on social media for his “straight-arm gesture.”
• An LSU law professor has been removed from teaching classes for reportedly making political comments in the classroom. 

I Laughed, I Cried, It Was Better Than Cats

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