As Donald Trump’s second term in office began, he issued clemency to more than 1,500 defendants charged over their involvement in the January 6th, 2021, US capitol insurrection. Carolyn Gallaher writes that Trump has had a long history of putting far-right groups at arm’s length, and is now likely to keep the extra-legal forces of groups like the Proud Boys and Oath Keepers within his orbit and to informally cooperate with them to achieve his political goals.
On his first day in office, President Donald Trump granted clemency to over 1,500 defendants charged with crimes related to the failed insurrection at the US capitol on January 6th, 2021. These pardons suggest Trump will embrace the far-right, put personal fealty above the rule of law, and support extra-legal violence his behalf.
Far right bona fides
Trump has a long history of flirting with the far-right. When asked to condemn neo-Nazi violence at the 2017 Unite the Right Rally in Charlottesville, Virginia, for example, Trump claimed there were “very fine people on both sides.” In the 2020 presidential election when a debate moderator asked him to reject the Proud Boys, a far right and often violent militant group, Trump instead suggested the group should “stand back and stand by.”
During Trump’s first term, his refusal to treat white supremacists, neo-Nazis, and so called ‘militias’ as outside the bounds of respectable politics legitimated their participation in the American political sphere. Before Trump, the Republican Party had mostly kept the far-right at bay. When the then ‘new right’ emerged in the early 1960s, its leaders argued that the party needed to keep extremist groups like the John Birch Society outside the fold. In 1962 William F. Buckley used his nascent magazine, the National Review, to deliver this message to the wider public. To be sure, the fence between the respectable and extreme parts of the right was never very strong (Buckley was careful to only called out the Birch Society’s leader, not its members), but the barrier generally remained standing until Trump came into office and then promptly knocked it down.
As National Guard units took back control of the US capitol on the evening of January 6, 2021, it was an open question whether the GOP would forcefully reject Trump and his far-right fighters who had tried to disrupt the peaceful transfer of power. It did not take long to answer the question. When Congress reconvened later that night to certify Biden’s election, 139 House Republicans voted against certification. And over the next few years, many Republicans who had condemned the failed coup would go on to endorse Trump’s 2024 candidacy. By the time Trump returned to the White House, it was largely a question of when, not if, he would pardon those arrested for January 6th.
Clemency has also erased any doubts Trump’s extremist backers had had about him. During Proud Boy Enrique Tarrio’s trial, for example, his attorney complained that Trump had made his client a scapegoat. After his release, Tarrio celebrated Trump’s victory. Trump’s clemency also offered legitimacy to far-right conspiracy theories about January 6th, including that the 2020 election was stolen and that the mob was not violent.
Upending legal accountability
Trump’s pardons suggest he has adopted a personalistic approach to law. While he isn’t likely to meddle with the legal code, he is likely to intervene when his high-profile supporters are charged with breaking the law. Intervention will be at a distance, but effective. Indeed, all he will need to do is post negative commentary about the charges on social media, and at least some officers of the court will respond. Prosecutors, for example, may refuse to indict Trump’s cronies, or judges may may dismiss legally solid cases, as US District Judge Aileen Cannon did with the government’s classified documents case in the summer of 2024. Trump can also use the bully pulpit to change how a prosecution is seen. Trump adopted this approach with January 6 cases, spending the last four years priming the wider public to see the government’s prosecutions as “politically motivated” and the defendants “hostages” and “political prisoners.”
Paramilitary politics
The US has a long history of non-state armed groups, including Pennsylvania’s Whiskey Rebels, the Ku Klux Klan, anti-Mormon vigilantes, and contemporary ‘militias.’ Many of these groups were supported by local and/or state officials. In the 1950s and 1960s, White Citizens Councils in Jackson Mississippi, for example, created a permission structure for violence that other groups enacted. Since the Revolutionary War, however, it has been rare for a President to endorse non-state armed groups. Indeed, less than 20 years after the war ended, Congress tried to rein in colonial militias by passing the Militia Act of 1792, which allowed the President to call up state militias, effectively putting them under presidential federal control. In the 1800s many states also passed anti-paramilitary statutes prohibiting militia musters without the governor’s approval.
“Grant Memorial IV” (CC BY 2.0) by Tyler Merbler
Although there is no indication Donald Trump coordinated directly with the Oath Keepers or Proud Boys, there is evidence both groups saw their work as being on his behalf. Trump’s pardons demonstrated that he saw their actions in the same way. However, Trump is unlikely to fold these groups into formal government forces. Indeed, modern US presidents already have a bevy of armed agents at their disposal, including in the Federal Bureau of Investigations (FBI), US Marshalls, and Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE), among others. But because these agencies have strict guidelines on the use of force, Trump is likely to keep extra-legal forces in his orbit and informally cooperate with them. As he did in 2020, Trump may encourage these groups to attack leftist protestors and intimidate Democratic legislators and voters. He is also unlikely to rein in these groups if they engage in other forms of criminality, including internet scams, drug dealing, extortion, etc.
Right-wing paramilitarism will harm American civilians and erode the rule of law. Paramilitaries rarely cede power once they get it and often use that power for personal advantage. In Colombia, for example, the government turned a blind eye to Paramilitary land grabs because they saw them as allies in their fight against FARC rebels. In Northern Ireland police collusion with Loyalist paramilitaries led some police handlers to protect their informants, even when they engaged in violent crime, including murder.
Navigating places controlled by paramilitarism is frightening and exhausting. Just ask anyone who lived through the conflicts in Colombia and Northern Ireland. Americans should not want or stand for this.
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- Note: This article gives the views of the author, and not the position of USAPP – American Politics and Policy, nor the London School of Economics.
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