"We cannot accept a repeat of what occurred four years ago," President Biden whined in the Washington Post on Monday, when Congress certified the results of the 2024 presidential election. Eternally present in whatever is left of the outgoing Democratic chief executive's mind, he castigated the protestors who breached the Capitol on January 6, 2021 as "violent insurrectionists"—even though none of the nearly 1,600 criminally charged defendants was charged with "insurrection" and about two-thirds of them were never accused, still less convicted, of any violent crime.

President Trump, who will return to office on January 20, and who was acquitted of "incitement to insurrection" in the Senate trial that followed his second impeachment in February 2021, has pledged to pardon "many" of the convicted protestors, whom he has described as "hostages." During and after the 2024 campaign, he noted that they faced harsh partisan justice in the legal system of the District of Columbia, where Biden won more than 92 percent of the 2020 presidential vote. More recently, Trump has stated that "the vast majority" of those convicted "should not be in jail," and promised that his administration would begin reviewing the convictions on a case-by-case basis within his first hour back in office.

Many January 6 defendants have protested inhumane prison........

© Newsweek