Two days earlier than former President Donald J. Trump was booked at an Atlanta jail on his fourth indictment, he held an occasion at his golf membership in New Jersey for an additional group of individuals dealing with felony fees: rioters accused of storming the Capitol on Jan. 6, 2021.
Standing subsequent to a portrait of himself portrayed as James Bond, Mr. Trump instructed the defendants and their households that that they had suffered significantly, however that every one of that may change if he received one other time period.
“Individuals who have been handled unfairly are going to be handled extraordinarily, extraordinarily pretty,” he mentioned to a spherical of applause on the occasion final August in Bedminster, N.J. “What you’ve suffered is simply ridiculous,” he added. “Nevertheless it’s going to be OK.”
That personal occasion was emblematic of how Mr. Trump has embraced dozens of Jan. 6 defendants and their family members and highlights how he has sought to undermine legislation enforcement when it fits him, whereas he additionally places forth a law-and-order marketing campaign.
Just lately, nonetheless, his celebrations of the Capitol riot and people who took half in it have grow to be extra public as he has promoted a revisionist historical past of the assault and positioned it on the coronary heart of his 2024 presidential marketing campaign.
Regardless of the practically 1,000 responsible pleas and convictions which have been secured in felony instances stemming from Jan. 6, Mr. Trump has repeatedly described the rioters who broke into the Capitol as “hostages” and has began to open his marketing campaign occasions with a recording of riot defendants singing the nationwide anthem from their jail cells.
He has highlighted the work of the so-called Freedom Nook, a vigil of activists and rioters’ members of the family who’ve gathered practically nightly for nearly two years outdoors the jail in Washington the place a number of the most violent rioters are being held. This yr, when it appeared as if Mr. Trump would go on trial in Washington on fees associated to Jan. 6, his aides mentioned the thought of him visiting that jail, in line with an individual acquainted with the discussions who was not licensed to talk publicly. The plan was delay after the trial was delayed.
By doing all of this, Mr. Trump has risked radicalizing his most die-hard supporters even additional, encouraging them to repeat occasions like people who unfolded on Jan. 6.
“It normalizes violence as a authentic answer to political grievances,” mentioned Robert Pape, a scholar on the College of Chicago who has studied American political violence within the wake of the Capitol assault. “And so it makes it extra possible that politically indignant individuals will resort to it.”
Trump Makes the Capitol Assault a Common Election Difficulty
Most politicians would possible have prevented specializing in an episode that shocked the nation as Jan. 6 did, and that polling persistently has proven alienates swing voters. However Mr. Trump has paid more and more extra consideration to Jan. 6 in his basic election marketing campaign.
Mr. Trump’s consideration to Jan. 6 has offered President Biden with apolitical alternative. Mr. Biden lately invited two Capitol Law enforcement officials who have been attacked by the mob to talk at one in all his personal marketing campaign occasions. As a part of his message of searching for to guard democracy, he has repeatedly described the assault on the Capitol as one of many nation’s darkest days.
“Trump mentioned that there was ‘lots of love’ on January the sixth,” Mr. Biden mentioned in a January speech at Valley Forge, Pa. “The remainder of the nation, together with legislation enforcement, noticed lots of hate and violence.”
Nonetheless, Mr. Trump has a protracted historical past of making alternate variations of actuality when it really works to his benefit. And as he has struggled to develop his voting coalition over three campaigns, he appears to have acknowledged that points surrounding Jan. 6 inspire his base. The topic has helped him strengthen the bond he shares together with his supporters by portray them as he likes to color himself — as victims of a federal legislation enforcement system run amok.
“I do suppose he’s sincerely involved about us and our households, and I don’t suppose he’s doing it only for political causes,” mentioned Will Pope of Kansas, who attended the Bedminster occasion and has been accused of, amongst different issues, jamming a flagpole into the Senate carriage doorways because the police have been making an attempt to shut them.
“He’s picked up on the rising concern in regards to the Justice Division and the federal government on the whole going exhausting in opposition to Americans,” he added.
Karoline Leavitt, a spokeswoman for Mr. Trump’s marketing campaign, mentioned the Justice Division below Mr. Biden had spent extra time prosecuting Jan. 6 defendants and Mr. Trump than “criminals, unlawful immigrants and terrorists.” She added, “President Trump will restore justice for all Individuals who’ve been unfairly handled by Joe Biden’s two-tier system of justice.”
How Trump Has Flipped on the Capitol Riot
Mr. Trump hasn’t all the time embraced Jan. 6 — at the least not brazenly.
Prodded by his advisers, he publicly disavowed the assault inside days of the Capitol being stormed, regardless that behind closed doorways he strongly resisted saying the election was over, in line with the Home choose committee that investigated the assault.
Quickly, nonetheless, Mr. Trump started to echo the rising makes an attempt to revise the historical past of the Capitol assault. In doing so, he usually adopted the lead of far-right lawmakers, together with Consultant Marjorie Taylor Greene of Georgia, who have been in flip following the lead of a small however vocal group of right-wing journalists and activists.
Mr. Trump’s embrace of Jan. 6 not solely has meant describing the assault wherein greater than 100 law enforcement officials have been injured as a “love fest.” It additionally has led him to inform a journalist that he needed to march to the Capitol that day however that his group had prevented him from doing so.
At a rally in Texas in January 2022, Mr. Trump, whereas teasing his eventual presidential bid, mentioned he would contemplate pardoning these concerned within the assault if he have been re-elected — a promise he has usually repeated.
A pivotal second in Mr. Trump’s reversal on the assault got here six months later.
In July 2022, one in all his aides, Liz Harrington, reached out to Julie Kelly, a conservative journalist who has written extensively in regards to the Capitol assault and the defendants charged with participating in it.
Ms. Harrington requested what Mr. Trump might do “to bail these individuals out,” Ms. Kelly recalled. She replied that whereas there was little he might do about their bail, Mr. Trump ought to educate himself in regards to the bigger authorized points surrounding Jan. 6. Ms. Kelly proposed a gathering with Cynthia Hughes, the founding father of the Patriot Freedom Challenge, a distinguished Jan. 6 authorized protection fund.
Mr. Trump’s aides initially balked on the thought of sitting down with Ms. Hughes, Ms. Kelly recalled. Ms. Hughes’s nephew, Timothy Hale-Cusanelli, was dealing with fees stemming from the Capitol assault, however he was additionally an avowed Nazi sympathizer who favored to take photos of himself dressed as Hitler.
In the long run, nonetheless, Ms. Kelly and Ms. Hughes have been granted an viewers with Mr. Trump at Bedminster in September 2022. Ms. Kelly mentioned that she instructed the previous president he was not doing sufficient to assist the Jan. 6 defendants and that they felt deserted by him. The 2 ladies additionally instructed Mr. Trump that a number of the federal judges he had placed on the bench have been “among the many worst” when it got here to dealing with the tons of of felony instances stemming from the Capitol assault.
After the assembly, Mr. Trump gave $10,000 to Ms. Hughes’s group. Across the identical time, he instructed the conservative radio host Wendy Bell, “I’m financially supporting individuals which might be unimaginable, they usually have been in my workplace truly two days in the past.” Mr. Trump later gave a video assertion of assist at one of many group’s fund-raising occasions at a lodge in Washington.
“Folks have been handled unconstitutionally, for my part, and really, very unfairly, and we’re going to resolve it,” he mentioned within the video.
Mr. Trump additionally referred to as Micki Witthoeft, the mom of Ashli Babbitt, a rioter who was shot and killed by a Capitol Police lieutenant on Jan. 6 and who’s considered by many on the appropriate as a sort of political martyr.
“He mentioned he talks about Ashli and he thinks about Ashli and that he has her on his coronary heart,” Ms. Witthoeft mentioned in a web-based video, wherein she recounted the decision with Mr. Trump at one in all her nightly protests on the Freedom Nook.
Mr. Trump’s aides and congressional allies, like Ms. Taylor Greene, additionally acquired him considering what they described because the poor situations that Jan. 6 defendants have been residing below within the Washington jail. However these situations lengthy preceded the arrival of the rioters, and at this level the jail homes solely about 15 or 20 them.
By that time, Mr. Trump had employed Joanna Miller Wischer, a former aide to Peter Navarro, who was beforehand Mr. Trump’s White Home commerce adviser and is now in jail for contempt of Congress as a result of he defied a subpoena from the Jan. 6 Home committee. She started a job with Mr. Trump’s political motion committee and shortly grew to become an advocate of types throughout the marketing campaign for Jan. 6 rioters.
One other concern helped to form Mr. Trump’s ideas on the Capitol assault and people who took half in it: the spectacle of the televised hearings that have been held all through that summer season and fall by the Jan. 6 Home committee. Mr. Trump was livid, in line with an individual with direct information of his pondering, as he watched a number of of his former aides testify in public about his incapacity to confess defeat within the 2020 election and his inactivity within the face of the violence on Jan. 6.
How the Jan. 6 Prisoners Grew to become ‘Hostages’
Mr. Trump’s use of the time period “hostages” to explain these charged with participating within the Capitol assault has been one in all his most outlandish makes an attempt to change the historical past of Jan. 6. The phrase, at the least as he has used it, expresses little past a baseless and distorted view that anybody who has been touched by the felony justice system due to their roles within the riot has been handled unfairly.
Through the Justice Division’s huge investigation of the Capitol assault, the variety of defendants jailed earlier than their trials has tended to hover round 5 or 10 % of the full quantity charged. However that quantity has decreased considerably in current months.
And the defendants jailed earlier than their trials have been among the many most violent rioters, accused of taking pictures a pistol within the air whereas standing on scaffolding above the mob, plotting to homicide the F.B.I. brokers who investigated them and different severe crimes.
One among Mr. Trump’s associates mentioned they realized that the previous president began to make use of the time period “hostages” within the months after he recorded a model of the “Star-Spangled Banner” with the so-called Jan. 6 Choir, a musical group composed of rioters serving time in a Washington jail. Mr. Trump has insisted on enjoying the music at a few of his rallies and has additionally performed it at occasions at Mar-a-Lago, his Florida residence, the place, in some instances, all of the diners on the patio rise in the course of the show and put their fingers over their hearts.
One of many recording’s producers was Kash Patel, an in depth aide to Mr. Trump who served in a prime Protection Division function within the ultimate days of his administration. Via a spokesman, Mr. Patel denied that he had any function in persuading Mr. Trump to make use of the phrase “hostages” in his speeches.
Final month at a marketing campaign occasion in Ohio, Mr. Trump stood by as an announcer requested the gang to rise for “the horribly and unfairly handled January sixth hostages.” Then, after saluting as a recording performed, Mr. Trump repeated the phrase.
“You see the spirit from the hostages, and that’s the place they’re, is hostages,” Mr. Trump mentioned, including that the lads have been additionally “unbelievable patriots.”
A number of critics, together with some federal judges who’ve dealt with Jan. 6-related instances, have mentioned that legitimizing the occasions of that day elevated the chance that one thing comparable might occur once more.
A distinguished decide in Washington, Royce C. Lamberth, earlier this month, whereas sentencing a person who assaulted the police on Jan. 6 to greater than seven years in jail, anxious aloud about Jan. 6 changing into “a precedent for additional violence in opposition to political opponents or governmental establishments.”
“This isn’t regular,” Choose Lamberth mentioned. “This can not grow to be regular. We as a neighborhood, we as a society, we as a rustic can not condone the normalization of the Jan. 6 Capitol riot.”
Michael Gold contributed reporting.