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 going through prison 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 each one of that might 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.
Lately, nonetheless, his celebrations of the Capitol riot and those that took half in it have change into 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 prison 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 exterior the jail in Washington the place among the most violent rioters are being held. This 12 months, when it appeared as if Mr. Trump would go on trial in Washington on fees associated to Jan. 6, his aides mentioned the concept of him visiting that jail, in line with an individual aware of the discussions who was not licensed to talk publicly. The plan was postpone 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 legit 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 probably that politically indignant individuals will resort to it.”
Trump Makes the Capitol Assault a Basic Election Challenge
Most politicians would probably 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 common election marketing campaign.
Mr. Trump’s consideration to Jan. 6 has supplied President Biden with a political alternative. Mr. Biden lately invited two Capitol Cops 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 looking 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 ‘loads 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 loads 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 assume he’s sincerely involved about us and our households, and I don’t assume 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 generally going laborious in opposition to Americans,” he added.
Karoline Leavitt, a spokeswoman for Mr. Trump’s marketing campaign, mentioned the Justice Division underneath 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 People 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 — a minimum of 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 typically 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 by which greater than 100 cops have been injured as a “love fest.” It additionally has led him to inform a journalist that he wished to march to the Capitol that day however that his crew 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 typically 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 collaborating in it.
Ms. Harrington requested what Mr. Trump may do “to bail these individuals out,” Ms. Kelly recalled. She replied that whereas there was little he may 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 Undertaking, 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 going through fees stemming from the Capitol assault, however he was additionally an avowed Nazi sympathizer who preferred to take photos of himself dressed as Hitler.
Ultimately, 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 girls additionally instructed Mr. Trump that among the federal judges he had placed on the bench have been “among the many worst” when it got here to dealing with the a whole lot of prison 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 can be unimaginable, they usually have been in my workplace really 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 resort 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 seen by many on the correct as a type 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 an online video, in which she recounted the call 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 obtained him involved in what they described because the poor situations that Jan. 6 defendants have been dwelling underneath 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. Ms. Wischer, whose involvement with Mr. Trump’s political motion committee was first reported by the information group Semafor, quickly grew to become an advocate of types throughout the marketing campaign for Jan. 6 rioters.
One other subject helped to form Mr. Trump’s ideas on the Capitol assault and those that 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 data of his pondering, as he watched a number of of his former aides testify in public about his incapability to confess defeat within the 2020 election and his inactivity within the face of the violence on Jan. 6.
How the Jan. 6 Prisoners Turned ‘Hostages’
Mr. Trump’s use of the time period “hostages” to explain these charged with collaborating 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, a minimum of as he has used it, expresses little past a baseless and distorted view that anybody who has been touched by the prison justice system due to their roles within the riot has been handled unfairly.
Throughout 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 p.c of the entire 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 capturing 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 critical crimes.
Certainly one of 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 within the Washington jail. Mr. Trump has insisted on taking part in the music at a few of his rallies and has additionally performed it at instances at Mar-a-Lago, his Florida residence, the place, in some instances, 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 high Protection Division position within the ultimate days of his administration. By a spokesman, Mr. Patel denied that he had any position 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 group 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 danger that one thing comparable may 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 turning into “a precedent for additional violence in opposition to political opponents or governmental establishments.”
“This isn’t regular,” Decide Lamberth mentioned. “This can’t change into regular. We as a neighborhood, we as a society, we as a rustic can’t condone the normalization of the Jan. 6 Capitol riot.”
Michael Gold contributed reporting.