Trump's January 6th insurrectionist pardons are an ongoing threat to public safety
Trump's January 6th insurrectionist pardons are an ongoing threat to public safety
- Mon, Apr 13 2026 at 10:40 AM
Mark, five years ago, Donald Trump—then the sitting president of the United States—incited a violent insurrection to keep himself in power after losing an election. On the very first day of his second term, he unconditionally pardoned more than 1,500 of the insurrectionists.
CREW has been closely tracking what the January 6 insurrectionists pardoned by Trump have been up to.
What we’ve found is alarming: an increasing number of them have been rearrested, charged or sentenced for other crimes since January 6, 2021.
Take Daniel Tocci, for example: Trump pardoned him for his actions on January 6. Recently, Tocci was sentenced for possessing more than 100,000 child sexual abuse images and videos.
Tocci argued that the child sexual abuse material case should be dismissed because “all the evidence” stemmed from an investigation into his involvement in the January 6th insurrection.
Trump’s pardons are undermining public safety—investigators did their job, proved criminality in over 1,000 cases and secured accountability, for January 6th and beyond. Then Trump wiped it away.
Unfortunately, this case is not unique.
According to a recent New York Times editorial building on our research, “at least 12 of the pardoned rioters have since been charged with other serious crimes, including child molestation, assault, harassment, murder plots and charges related to a vicious dog attack.”
One man, Brian Betancort has even been rearrested twice since the pardon, once for alleged assault, and then just last week for stalking.
Meanwhile, several pardoned insurrectionists are now suing the federal government for tens of millions of dollars in damages for “physical and emotional injuries” they claim were inflicted on them by Capitol Police and DC police officers working at the Capitol that day.
January 6th insurrectionists tried to overthrow our government—and now that their guy is back in power, they're trying to get paid tens of millions by the government for the harm they faced while they tried to overthrow it.
It’s absurd, but it’s not surprising that they would attempt to get restitution from the government given that Trump has signaled support for them with his sweeping pardons and given that Trump himself is reportedly demanding $230 million in restitution from the Department of Justice for its investigations into him.
And because Americans deserve to know how the department is handling it and whether any money has been paid out, we just sued the DOJ last week for records about Trump’s $230 million claim.
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