The Jan. 6 defendants granted sweeping clemency by President Trump are growing increasingly vexed with his administration because they don’t believe it’s delivering on his campaign promise of payback for their prosecutions.
It marks the apparent end of a honeymoon period between the administration and some of Trump’s most ardent supporters, as criticisms that top officials like Attorney General Pam Bondi and FBI Director Kash Patel aren’t living up to their expectations spill into public view.
Trump’s path to the White House was paved with promises of retribution against those he said weaponized the justice system against him and his supporters, including those prosecuted and convicted over their roles in storming the Capitol.
It’s spanned from exhaustive pardons to prosecuting the prosecutors and investigating the investigators.
While the president made good on his vows for Jan. 6 clemency, pardoning more than 1,500 people and commuting others’ sentences on his first day back in office, Jan. 6 defendants and their supporters are growing restless because they want the White House to hold accountable those who sent some of them to prison. Some, they say, should face counts of treason.
“Today is April 15th,” Suzzanne Monk, founder of the J6 Pardon Project, wrote Tuesday on X. “By 4/15/21, the Biden regime had already arrested 405 January 6th defendants.”
Enrique Tarrio, a leader of the Proud Boys who was convicted of seditious conspiracy but pardoned by Trump, boosted the post and suggested that, in the same amount of time, Bondi had only arrested a handful of “Tesla terrorists,” a reference to charges brought against individuals who have targeted billionaire Elon Musk’s electric vehicle company.
Monk said in her post’s replies that she would continue posting the stats “until we see action from the Bondi crew.” She told The Hill in an interview that she began sharing the comparisons to shut down suggestions that they “need to wait” for criminal cases to materialize when the Biden administration “marched in” right after Trump left office.
“It’s not that we want revenge. We want the system to be trusted again. We want the system to be trustworthy again. And that means you can’t keep the people who violated the law in the process of their job,” Monk said, pointing to those involved in the prosecutions of the so-called “J6ers.”
The Trump administration has removed several FBI agents and Justice Department prosecutors who worked on Jan. 6-related cases since the president took office in January.
Still, some ardent Jan. 6 defendants and supporters have expressed frustration with the lack of prosecutions that also go beyond Jan. 6, with one expert calling their asks unrealistic.
A petition to “Demand the Termination of Pam Bondi for the Lack of Justice Enforcement” has garnered nearly 2,000 signatures, with several signatories commenting that arrests of right-wing foes like 2016 Democratic presidential nominee Hilary Clinton or billionaire George Soros have not yet come to fruition.
“Arrest the democrat criminals or RESIGN,” Philip Anderson, a Jan. 6 defendant who was pardoned, wrote on X.
“Pam Bondi, where are you?” Trump acolyte Steve Bannon said on a recent episode of his WarRoom podcast.
Katherine Keneally, director of threat analysis and prevention for the Institute for Strategic Dialogue’s U.S. branch, said that despite the president’s vast clemency, Jan. 6 defendants are “still asking for more.”
“There’s this idea among those who committed criminal activities on January 6, that those that have been appointed by Trump or are part of the Trump administration will completely have their backs and do what they say,” she said, “which is just really not the reality of it.”
Jon Lewis, a research fellow at the Program on Extremism at the George Washington University, suggested that Jan. 6 defendants were a “living, breathing embodiment” of the left-wing abuse Trump sought to portray as he mounted his campaign — but ultimately were just a “useful cudgel.”
“Any expectation from the Jan. 6 crowd that this would lead to any good faith, fulsome effort to move this forward beyond the inauguration, I think, was misplaced,” he said.
The frustration against Trump’s top law enforcement officials has split some of the president’s loudest advocates.
Patel, in particular, caused online outrage when he tapped an agency veteran, Steven Jensen, to run the FBI’s Washington field office. Jensen led the bureau’s domestic terrorism operations section on Jan. 6, serving in a critical role responding to the riot, and helped monitor violent incidents at school board meetings across the country — both flashpoints for right-wing culture warriors.
“That really just encapsulates their mindset,” Lewis said of the blowback from Jensen’s promotion. “It really is this black and white in their minds; people like Steve Jensen are just, fundamentally, the enemies of the people.”
As the J6ers raged, mainstream MAGA influencers like Charlie Kirk and Donald Trump Jr., the president’s son, both shared an article suggesting the frustrations were “manufactured outrage.”
“This is not manufactured outrage!!!” Richard “Bigo” Barnett, a rioter who broke into then-House Speaker Nancy Pelosi’s (D-Calif.) office that day, wrote on X. “We suffered greatly and to say so is a slap in our face!”
Barnett, who was pardoned by Trump, questioned Patel and FBI Deputy Director Dan Bongino’s lack of communication with them.
“We want justice! We want the promises made kept! We stood! We showed up when Donald asked! We have seen nothing,” he said.
Couy Griffin, a former New Mexico county commissioner who was convicted and later pardoned for Jan. 6, urged Kirk specifically to “tread lightly” because “the outrage we feel is FAR FROM MANUFACTURED.”
Bongino, a right-wing podcaster before he was elevated to FBI leadership, attempted to address the concerns in a veiled message where he vowed that he and Patel were working on initiatives to “ensure that the mistakes of the past are never repeated, and that many of your open questions are answered.”
“We fully understand that some of the actions and initiatives we’ve taken may not immediately appear to fit into the puzzle,” Bongino said. “And that leaves a vacuum at times, filled by others. But accountability requires information, and people WITH information.
