Trump pledged to pardon Jan. 6 rioters. He faces pressure to name names. (2024)

Perna started tearing up, she recalled in an interview. Trump placed an arm around her and asked why she was crying, she said.

“The people here all have hope because some day their January 6er is coming home,” she said she told him. “Our January 6er is never coming home.”

Her nephew, 37-year-old Matthew Perna, entered the Capitol that day with a friend and marched through the halls chanting “USA!” He turned himself in to the FBI, told agents he tapped a window with a metal flagpole, and pleaded guilty to charges including disorderly and disruptive conduct. Her nephew’s case was delayed multiple times over 13 months. Matthew’s defense attorney told him that if he pleaded guilty he could expect a maximum sentence of six to 12 months, Geri said.

After Matthew entered his plea, Geri said prosecutors raised the possibility of adding a sentencing enhancement that could result in multiple years in prison — a move that she described as cruel, unnecessary and capricious. During the wait, he took his own life. The Justice Department did not respond to a request for comment on the matter.

Meeting Geri at Mar-a-Lago, Trump promised to posthumously pardon Matthew, she recalled of their conversation. He assured her that once he did, she would be smiling.

Perna is the only known individual rioter who Trump has specifically promised to pardon, according to interviews with about a dozen other prominent family members and advocates of those charged for their roles in the Jan. 6 attack. But Trump has made pardoning Jan. 6 defendants a signature campaign promise as he seeks another term in the White House, saying in a recent interview that he would consider all of them. His vow to exercise the clemency powers of the presidency has raised alarms about his support for political violence and touched off private conversations among supporters about how to deliver on his pledge.

Trump campaign spokeswoman Karoline Leavitt said he will decide “on a case-by-case basis when he is back in the White House.” She did not specify what criteria Trump would use. When asked directly, Trump has declined to rule out members of extremist groups such as the Proud Boys and Oath Keepers, whose leaders were convicted of seditious conspiracy.

Some Trump advisers and administration alumni involved in planning for a second term want Trump to limit his political exposure by distancing himself from the most violent offenders, according to people familiar with the conversations, who spoke on the condition of anonymity to describe private and preliminary discussions. Others are more concerned with compiling a list of names and preparing the paperwork for Trump’s signature on his first day in office. Another proposal under discussion is to convene advocacy groups for Jan. 6 defendants to make recommendations for pardons.

Some relatives of charged and convicted rioters said they are hopeful for their loved ones but oppose blanket amnesty because they want to investigate the suspicion, which lacks evidence, that undercover operatives instigated the attack.

“I don’t think pardons are a great idea for everyone, I think there should be a true investigation,” said Tami Jackson, whose husband, Brian Jackson, pleaded guilty in February to assaulting law enforcement and is being held in the D.C. jail awaiting sentencing in August. “I’m very much for accountability but I don’t think what my husband did warrants any jail time.”

As president, Trump repeatedly used his pardon power to help political allies such as former Maricopa County sheriff Joe Arpaio, sometimes adviser Roger Stone, former national security adviser Michael Flynn, and former campaign chiefs Paul Manafort and Stephen K. Bannon.

Ordinarily, pardon applications are reviewed by career officials in a designated office of the Justice Department that makes formal recommendations to the president based on neutral, expert legal advice. No Jan. 6 defendants have submitted petitions to the office, according to a review of court records and clemency applications.

More than 1,400 people have been federally charged in connection with the deadly Jan. 6 attack by a pro-Trump mob, including more than 500 charged with assaulting, resisting, or impeding police, and 133 who allegedly used weapons such as pipes and flagpoles or caused serious bodily injury, as of early May. About 1,000 have pleaded or been found guilty at trial, a third of them for felonies and two-thirds for misdemeanors such as trespassing in the restricted Capitol building or grounds. Thirteen have received sentences of at least 10 years. More than 160 people have been sentenced for assaulting or interfering with police, receiving an average sentence of 46 months.

A pardon can relieve recipients of punishments, such as prison sentences and restrictions to voting and gun ownership, but does not erase the criminal record.

The Supreme Court is considering a challenge to hundreds of Jan. 6 prosecutions that charged rioters with obstructing or impeding an official proceeding, such as the certification of the electoral college results. At the oral argument in April, several Republican-appointed justices expressed concerns that prosecutors could use the charge too broadly.

Trump has steadily escalated his glorification of Jan. 6 defendants, often known in the MAGA movement as “J6ers,” describing them as hostages and patriots who have been mistreated. After his conviction in New York on 34 counts of falsifying business records, Trump proudly adopted the term “political prisoner” for himself.

The message of such statements, which would be formalized by the act of pardoning them, is to condone criminal violence in service of his power, according to Grant Tudor, a policy advocate at the nonpartisan anti-authoritarianism group Protect Democracy who has recommended judicial and congressional curbs on abuses of the sweeping presidential pardon power.

Historically, he said, presidents have granted amnesty after insurrections such as the Whiskey Rebellion and the Civil War to encourage aggrieved factions to put down their arms and reintegrate into civil society. But pardoning Jan. 6 rioters, he said, would flip that logic on its head by rewarding insurrectionists.

“Promises of pardons would be a way of publicly signaling to those individuals that the law does not apply to them when it is convenient for the president for them to act on his behalf illegally,” Tudor said. “It’s a signal that what happened was okay.”

Throughout his campaign, Trump has met or spoken with several other families of Jan. 6 defendants or publicly championed their causes. Last year, he participated in the production of a soundtrack combining his voice reciting the Pledge of Allegiance with a rendition of the national anthem sung by Jan. 6 defendants held in the D.C. jail, and he has repeatedly played the song at rallies and other events.

At a New Hampshire campaign stop last year, Trump met and hugged a woman recently released from a Jan. 6-related sentence. This past April, he posted on social media about a Colorado woman convicted of disorderly and disruptive conduct and three other charges, sharing a link to donate money for her legal defense.

“I went there to exercise my First Amendment rights and to pray for our nation,” said the Colorado woman, Rebecca Lavrenz, known on social media as the “J6 Praying Grandma.” “I feel like I should be pardoned because I wasn’t doing anything contrary other than trying to defend our First Amendment rights and to preserve our country.”

A contentious question among Jan. 6 families and advocates is whether Trump should pardon Ray Epps, a Trump supporter from Arizona who pleaded guilty to misdemeanor disorderly conduct and has been falsely accused of being an undercover operative.

“If we do a blanket pardon, a lot of answers will not be addressed on who knew what, when and where. It’ll just be swept under the rug,” said Nicole Reffitt, who hopes Trump will pardon her husband, Guy, serving an 87-month sentence for charges including entering and remaining in a restricted building or grounds with a firearm. “There were bad actors there,” she said.

Reffitt and other family members and supporters still gather nightly for a vigil outside the D.C. jail, at a spot they call “Freedom Corner,” where they wave flags, play music and, at 9 p.m., joined the inmates inside in singing the national anthem. The supporters live-stream phone calls from the prisoners inside, often interrupted by the automated GlobalTel voice warning them of time running out, who they’ve pejoratively nicknamed Greta.

“It’s a badge of honor,” Michael Oliveras, a New Jersey man convicted of charges including assaulting officers, said over the phone at an evening vigil in May. “Most of us got caught up in the fray. And I’d do it again.”

Spencer S. Hsu and Tom Jackman contributed to this report.