Do Trump's Jan. 6 pardons undermine rule of law in America?

President Trump mass pardoned January 6th rioters, many who violently attacked police officers. The rioters were convicted in U.S. courts with due process. But the pardons undermine those court rulings, and possibly the concept of rule of law in America.

Paula Reid, chief legal correspondent at CNN.

Mary McCord, executive director of the Institute for Constitutional Advocacy and Protection and Visiting Professor of Law at Georgetown University Law Center.

Part I

MEGHNA CHAKRABARTI: Hours after being released from federal prison last week, Enrique Tarrio called in to The Alex Jones Show. Jones is a far-right radio show host and a conspiracy theorist who has claimed that the U.S. government staged the September 11th attacks, the Oklahoma City bombing, and the 1969 moon landing.

Jones also viciously defamed family members of the children murdered in the Sandy Hook, Connecticut school shooting. He was found liable for that. And a judge ordered him to pay more than a billion dollars in damages to Sandy Hook parents. Jones instead declared bankruptcy. Now, Alex Jones also partially funded Donald Trump's rallies that took place in Washington, D.C. on January 6th, 2021.

He supported efforts to overturn the 2020 election and spoke to Trump supporters on January 6th before that crowd went on to attack the U.S. Capitol. Jones called it, quote, a turning point in American history, end quote. Now, why am I explaining Alex Jones's background? Well, because it has to do with Enrique Tarrio.

He is the leader of the far-right militia group, the Proud Boys. And one of his connections to Jones is January 6th. Tarrio had been serving 22 years in prison after being convicted of seditious conspiracy against the United States for his participation in the attack on the U.S. Capitol. And here's what Tarrio said on Jones' show.

ENRIQUE TARRIO: Success is going to be retribution, you know, we got to do everything in our power to make sure that the next four years sets us up for the next hundred years.

CHAKRABARTI: Tarrio's 22 years was the longest sentence of almost 1,600 people who were federally charged in connection to January 6th. Tarrio wasn't physically at the Capitol on the day of the attack.

In fact, he had been arrested two days earlier in a separate case and ordered out of Washington, D.C. However, he was charged with organizing and directing the Proud Boys attack on Congress. And he'd been serving that sentence until this month, when he was given a full pardon by President Donald Trump.

That's when he called Alex Jones.

TARRIO: I'm happy that the president's focusing not on retribution and focusing on success, but I will tell you, I'm not going to play by those rules. The people who did this, they need to feel the heat. They need to be put behind bars. They pardoned the J6 committee, fine. In this country, our case proves that you could be imprisoned for anything.

CHAKRABARTI: The January 6th investigation was the largest undertaken by the Justice Department in the history of the United States. On day one of his presidency, President Trump upended that by issuing pardons or commutations for the more than 1,500 people charged in connection with the January 6th attack. Trump signed the order using his usual black sharpie.

DONALD TRUMP: So this is a big one. Anything you want to explain about this? We hope they come out tonight, frankly.

CHAKRABARTI: On January 6, 2021, rioters stormed the U.S. Capitol, and they damaged the building, defecated in its halls. They threatened the U.S. government and the people who serve it, and they temporarily stopped the constitutionally mandated electoral vote confirmation process.

Many also violently attacked police officers. Trump's blanket pardons do not distinguish between those who did and did not commit physical violence at the Capitol. Even though roughly 140 police officers were brutally attacked that day. And some 172 defendants pleaded guilty to assaulting law enforcement.

Officer [Daniel] Hodges tried to hold the line on January 6th at the Capitol. He still works for the D.C. Metropolitan Police Department, and he talked to reporters after Trump pardoned the people who attacked him.

DANIEL HODGES: They called me a traitor, telling me to remember my oath.

I was beaten, crushed, kicked, punched, surrounded. Someone reached underneath my visor, tried to gouge out my eye.

And all these people were just pardoned by Donald Trump, who says that they were the real victims. That they were the patriots. I don't understand how anyone can believe that.

CHAKRABARTI: Trump's actions, though not surprising, are not in line with what his own vice president claimed would happen in the days just prior to Trump's inauguration.

Roughly two weeks ago, in mid-January, then vice president-elect JD Vance was on Fox News. And he seemed to suggest that people who committed violence would not get pardoned.

JD VANCE: I think it's very simple. Look, if you protested peacefully on January the 6th, and you've had Merrick Garland's Department of Justice treat you like a gang member, you should be pardoned.

If you committed violence on that day, obviously you shouldn't be pardoned. And there's a little bit of a grey area there.

CHAKRABARTI: Clearly, that's not what Trump did. He issued that blanket pardon. Now, the mass pardons were not universally welcomed by Republicans. A few dared to speak out. Here's Republican Senator Lindsey Graham of South Carolina.

He was on NBC's Meet the Press this weekend.

LINDSEY GRAHAM: I fear that you will get more violence. Pardoning the people who went into the Capitol and beat up a police officer violently I think was a mistake, because it seems to suggest that's an okay thing to do.

CHAKRABARTI: Jackson Reffitt told ABC News that he's concerned too.

His father was sentenced to seven years in prison for the January 6th attack. And that happened after Jackson turned his own father into authorities. Now, his dad is free.

JACKSON REFFITT: I love him, and I wanted him to get help in prison, but the only thing he's got is more radicalized. He does not need more contact with these far-right extreme militias that are going to validate him.

He needs help, and this pardon is not going to help him. This is going to validate him and justify every action that he has taken leading up to this point. And that's what scares me, is who knows what that validation could lead to.

CHAKRABARTI: Another man, Stewart Rhodes, was at the top of Trump's commutation list.

He's the founder and leader of the far-right extremist group, the Oath Keepers. He had been serving 18 years for seditious conspiracy against the United States in relation to the attack on January 6th. After he was released this month from a Maryland prison, Rhodes waited outside the D.C. jail for other defendants and then talked to the media.

STEWART RHODES: I think it's a good day for America that this is being, all the wrongs are being undone. So, none of these people should have been here in the first place. None of them were ever tried in a fair ... trial.

REPORTER: And what about, what would you say to the Capitol Police officers who were injured in this?

RHODES: What do you mean, what do I say?

REPORTER: I mean, there are some Capitol Police officers who were seriously injured in this.

RHODES: Okay, and?

REPORTER: And they're concerned that people are not going to have to face any charges for.

RHODES: No, they did face charges, but like I said, you're presumed innocent until proven guilty, until you get a fair trial in front of a fair jury. That's going to hold the government to a standard of beyond a reasonable doubt, in front of a judge who's also fair.

It's going to hold the government to its evidentiary burden of turning over exculpatory evidence, and also not do perjure testimony. Until you get that fair trial, you're presumed innocent until proven guilty.

CHAKRABARTI: After his release, Rhodes also paid a visit to the U.S. Capitol, the very building he had attacked four years earlier, apparently to advocate for the release of another Oath Keeper.

A judge has since barred Rhodes from entering the Capitol or Washington, D.C. without court permission. Now, we wanted to go over that history because it has been four years since that unique and terrible day in U.S. history, January 6th, 2021.

And with these blanket pardons for people who tried to interrupt the peaceful transfer of power, something that's been going on for centuries in this country, and they tried to do it, in many cases, violently, that calls into the question this country's faith in the entire concept of the rule of law.

So that's what we're going to talk about today. But let's start with some more details about this pardon, or these pardons, and we'll go to Paula Reid. She's Chief Legal Correspondent at CNN. Paula, it's great to have you back.

PAULA REID: And thanks so much for having me.

CHAKRABARTI: And thanks to you for listening through that history that we felt very strongly we wanted to go back over.

I mean, with that background in mind, spend a minute giving us more details. I've been saying pardons and commutations, but it was overwhelmingly one of those things. What actually happened?

REID: Yeah, that's right. Look, one swoop of a pen, he just ended all of the approximately 1,600 cases, stemming from January 6th, in three different ways.

Most of the people, the overwhelming majority of people, who'd been convicted, received pardons. 14 people were selected for commutations. That means their sentence is wiped out, they can walk out of jail, but they still have that conviction. But there's going to be a process to review those commutations, and some of those 14 people could very well also receive a pardon.

And the last group were people whose cases are still pending. Those cases are going to be dismissed. But what we were promised was kind of this nuanced approach, violent versus nonviolent. But it was clear in the past few months of reporting and talking to Trump advisors that this was likely going to be something much more broad. Because they were so determined to do this on day one, and they were resistant to any kind of process, you know, individual, case by case assessment, that would take time.

CHAKRABARTI: Was it just his advisors that were resistant to the process or President Trump himself as well?

REID: So Trump had vowed to do this on day one. So his advisors tasked with figuring out, okay, how do we do this? The one thing they said is we're not going to do a case-by-case basis. This isn't going to be the usual process.

And I said, okay, well, how are you going to make this distinction, that Trump is signaling, he wants to make. Vance, even the Speaker of the House have all said, you're going to differentiate between violent and nonviolent offenders. Because this is a very violent event. And if you don't do a case-by-case basis, it's hard to distinguish.

Cause even if you said everyone charged with assault will be pardoned. Well, that's a very broad variety of conduct that is charged under assault. Also, you have people like Enrique Tarrio, who you referenced, who did not directly engage in the violence but was directing it from afar and also received one of the most serious sentences.

So it was clear that this was going to take a lot of work. There's a lot of nuance, if you really want to parse out violent versus nonviolent. But Trump wanted to send a message. And he just said, you know what, let's just do it this way. So something much more broad than what he had signaled.

Part II

CHAKRABARTI: Today, we are talking about the very concept of the rule of law in the United States and what President Donald Trump's blanket pardons of all the people charged and convicted or who pleaded guilty, in relation to their participation in the January 6, 2021 riots on the Capitol, what those blanket pardons say about the very concept of the rule of law in this country.

I'm joined today by Paula Reid. She's chief legal correspondent at CNN. And before I go any further, I just want to correct something I said a little bit earlier. I had mentioned that Oath Keepers leader Stewart Rhodes, it had been determined by a judge that he needs permission to enter the Capitol or Washington, D.C.

Well, it turns out just yesterday, that requirement was revoked by another judge, so he no longer needs permission to walk the very halls or enter halls of Congress or enter the city of Washington, D.C. So let's hear a little bit again from an actual member of law enforcement.

This is former Capitol police officer Harry Dunn. He was at the site of the attack on January 6th, 2021. Now, Dunn ran unsuccessfully for office last year. He lost the Democratic Congressional Primary in Maryland's 3rd District. And this, or just last week, he expressed his profound frustration about the pardons.

HARRY DUNN: The Republican Party has long claimed to be the party of law and order. Back to blue. However, many lawmakers silence and refusal to push back against Donald Trump's actions make it incredibly hard to take that claim serious.

CHAKRABARTI: Well, here's President Trump himself and he was on Fox News with Sean Hannity, and Hannity asked him why he had pardoned rioters that were violently attacking or had been violently attacking the police.

TRUMP: It would be very, very cumbersome to go and look, you know how many people we're talking about? 1,500 people, almost all of them are, should not have been, this should not have happened. And the other thing is this. Some of those people with the police troop, but they were very minor incidents, okay? You know, they get built up by that, a couple of fake guys that are on CNN all the time.

They were very minor incidents, and it was time. You have murderers in Philadelphia, you have murderers in Los Angeles that don't even get any time. They don't even collect them and they know they're there to be collected. And then they go on television and act holier than thou about this one or that one.

You had 1,500 people that suffered. That's a lot of people.

CHAKRABARTI: President Donald Trump on Fox News with Sean Hannity. I want to bring Mary McCord into the conversation now. She's executive director at the Institute for Constitutional Advocacy and Protection. She's also visiting professor of law at Georgetown University Law Center.

She served as acting assistant attorney general for national security at the U.S. Department of Justice from 2016 to 2017 and had other positions in in the highest levels of the federal justice system. Mary McCord, welcome back to On Point.

MARY McCORD: Thanks, Meghna. Nice to be here.

CHAKRABARTI: Minor incidents? Were these minor incidents in the physical attacks on law enforcement on January 6th?

McCORD: No, they were not. And just ask the many judges, the federal district court judges of the district court here in District of Columbia, which handled these nearly 1,600 cases, they saw the evidence repeatedly, you know, saw the violent attacks on law enforcement officers, the erecting of a gallows to try to hang Mike Pence, the destruction of property, et cetera.

And also did the rest of us. We saw video, we heard audio, we saw social media bragging about it. All of this. So, yes, were there some people who were charged with misdemeanors, whose crimes were not violent, and who entered and trespassed and things like that? Yes, there were some portion of that nearly 1,600 whose crimes were not violent.

And that is, you know, why I think we heard people like JD Vance say, those are the people who are likely to be pardoned, but Trump went so much further than that, including pardoning you know, more than 600 people charged with assaulting, resisting, or impeding law enforcement. And 174 of those did so with a deadly or dangerous weapon.

We're talking about swords, axes, hatchets, knives, etc. So no, not a minor incident. 140 officers severely wounded. One. And one who, you know, several who died. Afterwards.

CHAKRABARTI: Afterwards, right, right. So, I'm glad that you pointed out that we all saw it. Because I think, I mean, some people still, either they don't remember or haven't seen all the video or the specific actions that you're talking about. But the point remains, that the attack on January 6th remains one of the best documented, through video and audio and eyewitness accounts, mass crimes in U.S. history.

And yet President Trump has somehow, in the minds and eyes of his voters, shifted the criminality as he sees it, away from the people who attacked Congress on January 6th and towards the entire justice system of this country. I mean, just listen to President Trump again. This is from his interview with Sean Hannity on Fox News just six days ago, Wednesday, January 22nd.

Just two days after he issued those pardons, and Sean Hannity asked the president why he had pardoned people who were, quote, convicted or involved in incidents where they were violent with the police. And this is the first part of what Trump said.

TRUMP: A number of reasons. Number one, they were in there for three and a half years, a long time, and in many, solitary confinement, treated like nobody's ever been treated, treated so badly.

They were treated like the worst criminals in history. And you know what they were there for? They were protesting the vote, because they knew the election was rigged, and they were protesting the vote. And that's, you should be allowed to protest a vote. You should be allowed to. You know, the day, when the day comes.

HANNITY: But you shouldn't be able to invade the Capitol.

TRUMP: No. Ready? Most of the people were absolutely innocent. Okay, but forgetting all about that, these people have served horribly, a long time.

CHAKRABARTI: Okay, so, Mary, first and foremost, there were many, many people at, in Washington that day, and also who had approached the Capitol, who were protesting peacefully. Just to be clear, as far as we know, in the, you know, almost 1,600 cases that the Justice Department brought, were any of those people who were outside the Capitol protesting peacefully charged?

McCORD: I don't believe so. Unless they were going into restricted areas. Like I said, some were nonviolent, but there were many, many, many who actually were engaged in violence and many who pleaded guilty to that.

CHAKRABARTI: Right. And in fact, in the rally beforehand, no one was arrested for their actions then, right?

That is completely in line with the freedom of speech and expression in this country. But Trump here, the President here is saying that these, the people that the Justice Department charged were the worst treated in U.S. history. I don't know exactly what he's talking about there, but, I mean, what's your response to the President?

Even saying that.

McCORD: Well, it really seems like this is something that the president is just making up. He's making up because I think part of the reason he issued these pardons was to really just support his own false narrative about the 2020 election that he has never ever given up on. He's never ever given up on his claims that it was a rigged election that Joe Biden did not legitimately win.

And so I think part of this is to justify those lies. I mean, we just listened to that clip of him saying as much, about these people had the right to protest a rigged election. There's no evidence of that. And you know, in terms of their treatment, the judges in the district of Columbia. You know, followed all of the proper procedures and ensured the constitutional rights of the defendants in front of them.

So let me tell you what that means. That means ensuring that people have an attorney. If they can't afford one, one is appointed for them. If they can afford one. It's an attorney of their choice. Those attorneys have the ability to bring motions before trial, seeking to suppress evidence, seeking to exclude evidence, seeking to dismiss the case.

If they think it's been unjustly brought, these judges provide them what's called due process of law, which is this process, right? Of bringing motions, having a defense. Those who sought to plead guilty were read their rights. They waive those rights. Pleaded guilty, agreed to the facts that would be proffered, that were proffered by the prosecutors. Because a guilty plea means the prosecutor says, if this case were to go to trial, here are the facts that the government would prove.

And the judge looks at each defendant and says, do you agree that those, you know, with those facts. And these are voluntary guilty pleas which there were over a thousand people who pleaded guilty. Those who decide to go to trial, their attorneys are able to participate in choosing the jurors for that trial.

They're able to put on a defense at that trial. The defendant, if he so chooses, is able to testify at that trial. And the verdict requires a unanimous verdict. Judges then take information before sentencing. And they include all of that in rendering their sentence.

And I just want to note that judges appointed by Democrats, Democratic presidents, Republican presidents, and Donald Trump himself in his first term have uniformly, at sentencing, decried and denounced the violence and the seriousness of these crimes denounced what was done there and indicated that the attempt here was not just about violence, but also to overturn the results of the election.

CHAKRABARTI: I'm so glad you brought that up, Mary, because I wanted to ask this question.

I mean, I understand a lot about why there's this focus, especially, you know, amongst political types in Washington and in the media on, well, Trump maybe shouldn't have pardoned the people who violently attacked law enforcement. But isn't, in a sense, distinguishing between the two missing the point, right?

Because, yes, I mean, physical violence is abhorrent, no matter what, but so is a kind of political violence, which is also, it was, at least at one time, abhorrent in this country, which is essentially what happened on January 6th. So when we have people who pleaded guilty to, you know, charges of attempting to overthrow the 2020 election and things like that, but yet we in the media are like really focused on shouldn't Trump have not pardoned the people who violently attacked a police officer?

Are we missing the point?

McCORD: I think you're very right about that, Meghna, because even for those who were nonviolent, you know, they were prosecuted because they did violate laws, laws that are put in place for public safety, the safety of members of Congress, those who are going in and out of the Capitol building to do their jobs, and to protect things like the constitutionally required meeting of both houses of Congress to certify the electoral vote.

And, you know, just to mention some things that judges said at sentencing, you know, one judge said the court cannot condone the shameless attempts by the defendant and anyone else to misinterpret or misrepresent what happened. It cannot condone the notion that those who broke the law on January 6th did nothing wrong or that those duly convicted with all the safeguards of the United States constitution, including a right to trial by jury in felony cases, are political prisoners or hostages.

And then he said on January 6th, a mob of people invaded and occupied the U.S. Capitol using force to interrupt the peaceful transfer of power mandated by the constitution and our Republican heritage. This was not patriotism. It was the antithesis of patriotism. So that's, you know, a Republican judge on the fence for almost 40 years.

And to your point, there really was no reason for any of these pardons. I think people are rationalizing, well, if there were going to be pardons, they certainly shouldn't apply to the people who, you know, committed acts of violence, but a pardon is an act of mercy that is generally received when a defendant has accepted responsibility, changed their life for the better, maybe served a very long sentence.

Oftentimes pardons are after person has already finished their sentence. And they've contributed the community and they've shown, you know, how much they've changed, or they're used when sentencing practices have changed dramatically. So sentences, for example, in drug crimes, years back in the '80s, were extremely long.

Those sentences have been reduced now, so it seems unfair for people sentenced back at that time to still be serving such lengthy sentences. So these are the kind of people that sometimes get pardons or a commutation, right? A shortening of the sentence that still keeps the conviction. But these are things you look at individually.

And the blanket pardon that doesn't look at the serious of the crime, their remorse or their lack thereof, their actions after January 6th, you know, that is just, doesn't have any really valid reason, although the pardon power is a power given to the president alone under the U.S. Constitution.

CHAKRABARTI: Well, I guarantee you in the near future, I want to do a show that does, takes a very scrutinizing eye to the entire concept of a presidential pardon. We'll do that a little bit later.

But I take your point. I mean, a crime was committed against the body politic of the United States, right, against the country as a whole. Paula Reid, I know we've got you back here and I wanted to ask you again, from your perspective, not only as a legal scholar yourself, but also in your contacts with the Justice Department.

I'm thinking back to what Stewart Rhodes, the leader of the Oath Keepers, said in that clip that we played at the top of the show, just after he had been released from prison. His claim was it's basically in opposition to everything Mary just described, in terms of how the justice system functioned across these 1,500 plus cases.

I mean, Rhodes claimed that he didn't get a fair trial, that the jury wasn't fair, that the government wasn't held to a standard of beyond a reasonable doubt. He claimed that the judges in these cases weren't fair. He even made a claim that the government didn't turn over evidentiary, or, excuse me, exculpatory evidence to defense attorneys.

He also made some, a claim about perjury testimony. I mean, what's your response to that? Or, you know, contacts that you have within the Justice Department about this wholesale criticism or even just flat-out rejection of the legal system that many of the January 6th pardonees are claiming?

REID: It sounds a lot like President Trump, right? Everything is always unfair. He's always a victim. It was an unfair judge. It was an unfair jury. They're politically motivated prosecutors. It's a very similar claim. I mean, you could appeal if you thought there were actual material, material issues like that.

So here, you know, there's just no acceptance of responsibility and an attempt to undermine the legitimacy of the process, not only by him, but also by President Trump. And now we're seeing the Trump Justice Department do this as well. Yesterday we saw, or Monday, we saw that they were beginning to investigate prosecutors specifically who charged obstruction of justice.

Saying that, you know, this was a waste of resources. Because, as we know, the Supreme Court eventually ruled obstruction of justice could not be charged. Obstruction could not be charged related to January 6th, it's not what the specific statute was meant for, but this appears to be part of an effort to undermine the entirety of this investigation of this case, undermine the legitimacy to help, you know, push back against some of the criticism Trump has received.

For really just ending all of the cases stemming from January 6th.

Part III

CHAKRABARTI: Today we are talking about what President Donald Trump's blanket pardoning of people who were charged and either pleaded guilty or were convicted of crimes related to the January 6th attack on Congress. What that blanket pardon says about this nation's faith in the rule of law.

And I am very aware that as he was leaving the White House, President Biden also issued a high number of pardons as well. So, I just want to promise everybody, once again, in the near future we are going to do a show that scrutinizes presidential pardons as a whole. But let's listen to what House Speaker Mike Johnson said about Trump's decision to pardon more than 1,500 people.

And he spoke at a news conference just last week.

MIKE JOHNSON: I think what was made clear all along is that peaceful protests and people who engage in that should never be punished. There was a weaponization of the Justice Department. There was a weaponization of the events. You know, the prosecutions that happened after January 6th.

It was a terrible time and a terrible chapter in America's history. The president's made his decision. I don't second guess those. And yes, you know, it's kind of my ethos, my worldview. We believe in redemption. We believe in second chances. If you could, you would argue that those people didn't pay a heavy penalty having been incarcerated and all of that, that that's up to you.

But the president's made a decision. We move forward. There are better days ahead of us. That's what we're excited about. We're not looking backwards. We're looking forward.

CHAKRABARTI: That's how Speaker Mike Johnson, Paula, about this claim of weaponization of the Justice Department, with, you know, this largest investigation that the Justice Department has ever undertaken in U.S. History. I mean, I suppose what is the aftermath of the pardons been inside the Department of Justice? I mean, how are the hundreds, if not thousands of people who worked on these cases responding to that?

REID: Well, it's of course demoralizing. Because this was a massive case that was supported by videos and pictures, I mean thousands, thousands and thousands of pieces of evidence that really make it hard to doubt that this happened or that certain individuals engaged in certain conduct.

But this is part of a larger war attacking the integrity of the Justice Department, something Trump has been doing for a really long time, his supporters are doing as well. I think what's a little bit different here is the pardoning of people who committed violence, arguably in Trump's name. That sends a chilling effect because it can send a message of, well, if you commit violence in my name, I've got your back.

And that is enormously concerning, because you also have a president whose power and immunity has just been expanded by the Supreme Court. The Supreme Court just gave him absolute immunity for anything that could qualify as a quote, official act. So together, I think a lot of these decisions and a lot of these events are deeply, deeply concerning to people inside the Justice Department.

CHAKRABARTI: I'm seeing reporting that suggests that a lot of people are leaving government service in the Justice Department. Have you seen something similar?

REID: So certainly, people have left. Some of that is common in the transition. Some people have also done the Trump administration once, not in the mood to do it twice.

And certainly, after Trump's reelection, I know I heard from a source who works at a legal staffing agency, is specifically taking people out of government and putting them into private practice, and said that they had just been inundated with calls. So people are not only demoralized, I think people are also just fearful, but there are also people who I think want to stay and continue to do their jobs.

But the incoming Trump Justice Department officials, they have such a deep-seated distrust and dislike of career officials, which is, you know, why we saw yesterday them firing several career officials who worked on the special counsel investigation in violation of civil service protections. There is a deep, deep distrust there.

CHAKRABARTI: Oh, I see what you're talking about, that prosecutors who worked on Trump investigations have been just recently fired, more than a dozen.

REID: Career prosecutors.

CHAKRABARTI: Career prosecutors. Okay. So that just recently happened. All right. So let's once again listen to what President Donald Trump himself has said about the actions that he took in these blanket mass pardons.

Once again, he spoke at length to Sean Hannity on Fox News. And here's another part of his answer when Hannity asked him why he had pardoned the violent rioters.

TRUMP: And you know what? Those people, and I'm not saying in every single case, but there was a lot of patriotism with those people. A lot of patriotism.

You know, they did a recording, and you know, they asked me if I'd do the voiceover and I did, you know, it was the number one selling. Whatever you call it nowadays, album, song, whatever --

HANNITY: CD?

TRUMP: Whatever you call it. You don't know. It changes every year, right? But it was the number one selling song, number one on Billboard, number one on everything, on everything, for so long.

People get it. They wanted to see those people released.

HANNITY: American people were aware. You told them what you would do.

CHAKRABARTI: That's President Donald Trump on Fox News with Sean Hannity. And by the way, a song that people imprisoned for their attack on Congress, included, I believe, it was the National Anthem.

Donald Trump used that on the campaign trail. Now here once again is Officer Danny Hodges with the D.C. Metropolitan Police Department. You heard him earlier, because he was quite emotionally troubled by the fact that the people who physically attacked him on January 6th had been just pardoned.

He told reporters at a press conference last week that he is still on the job and in fact worked at President Donald Trump's inauguration just this month.

HODGES: It was kind of surreal on Inauguration Day, having all these people wearing MAGA hats. They saw me and they saw my uniform. They recognized who I was.

They thanked me for my service. And it reminded me of January 6, 2021, because on that morning, they thanked me for my service, too. And then they went into the Ellipse and listened to Donald Trump speak. And he told them they had to fight and then he sent them to the Capitol. And once they went to the Capitol, they didn't thank me anymore.

CHAKRABARTI: D.C. Metropolitan Police Officer Danny Hodges. So Mary, you know, in the list of 100 questions that people who wish to become naturalized citizens of the United States. There is a question that says, what is the rule of law? And the answer is very, very simple. The answer is nobody is above the law.

I mean, how integral would you say that that concept is to how the U.S. justice system is supposed to function?

McCORD: It's really at the core. And I would elaborate and give it a few more sort of points than just no one's above the law, but that is the way you sort of sum it up. I would describe it in sort of four ways. It's a system of laws that both the governed. That means the people, and the government, agreed to abide by. It is, there is transparency in the enactment and the enforcement of that law.

So people, so that there's predictability and there's stability. There is a system of adjudicating rights and responsibilities that is fair and preserves people's rights. And there are, in that system, there are neutral and competent and independent lawyers and judges, right? All of this comes together to lead up to what you just said.

No one is above this, the governed or the government. And that's what, you know, this type of blanket pardon really undermines that. It's also why the Supreme court's immunity decision really undermined that rule of law, because it does give the president, by virtue of his office, absolute immunity for official acts, which include pardons.

And then presumptive immunity for things that are arguably, you know, within the outer boundaries of official acts, which is still something we don't know exactly what the parameters of that are. And that is just opening sort of the floodgates to abuse of power in a way that is completely inconsistent with the impartial adherence to the rule of law.

CHAKRABARTI: Paula, did you want to respond to that or add to that?

REID: Yeah. And again, I think you have to take the pardons in combination with what the Supreme Court says as we look forward to the next four years. I mean, President Trump, his advisors, they're coming into the White House, and they'll tell me, like, they have more experience now.

They're more sophisticated about trying to achieve their aims. But then he has this elevated, expanded power given to him by the Supreme Court. And he's sent this dog whistle, really, out to his supporters. That if you commit violence in my name, I have your back. All of these things together are deeply, deeply concerning.

CHAKRABARTI: Well, actually that makes me wonder, Mary, and I'll turn this one back to you. The sort of wholesale criticism, or doubt that President Trump and many of his supporters now have about the justice, U.S. justice system.

Can we say that essentially, it could potentially be a mirror image of the kinds of criticisms and doubts that other people have had about the justice system. I mean, you know, there's long been concern about racial bias in the justice system, about wrongful convictions about, you know, judge shopping, jury shopping. You know the list better than I do.

Is this simply the sort of natural continual evolution that we've had as Americans when it comes to maybe not our complete trust in how the rule of law functions in practice in U.S. courts?

McCORD: So the difference, I think, is that those criticisms, and many are very legitimate. You know, I and others, you know, have worked to bring cases and advance policies that will reform some of the systemic issues, particularly as you indicated, when it comes to racial bias within the system, and things like that.

The treatment of people who are too poor to pay bail, those kinds of things, which I would say is not the bail issues, not such an issue in the federal system. Because someone who can't afford to pay bail cannot be detained, simply because they can't afford it. But many states still have that bail system that leaves people incarcerated for long periods of time, before they even get a trial.

So there are legitimate criticisms, and there is plenty of room for reform. I would say the differences; those criticisms and those attacks are factually based. They are data based. There is the reason to actually things, you can point to actual biases and actual constitutional violations such as the detaining of people too poor to pay bail. When someone with the money to pay bail would be set free pretrial, right?

They can, those things have a basis. What Donald Trump and his supporters, including those pardoned, most of them, I'm not going to say every one of them, because I understand there's at least one person who has refused the pardon.

But they are just creating out of whole cloth, a false narrative about what happened on January 6th. And we just heard it today on your show, repeated by the president, repeated by some of those people pardoned. And that's the difference. This is just a lie that has been propagated now, for, you know, ever since January 6, 2021.

Really ever since before that, before the election in 2020, Donald Trump had already started to say that if he didn't win, it was because there was a rigged system, and that there was fraud in the election. And 65 court cases said there's no evidence of fraud significant enough to change the outcome of the election.

They rejected that, Republicans, Democratic judges, et cetera. So I think we have to keep in mind, like we cannot capitulate to a false narrative as support for these attacks on the justice system.

CHAKRABARTI: Well, you know, I was thinking about how in the tape we've played of Republican lawmakers, even those who go so far as to say that they did not agree with President Trump's decision to pardon the folks who had been convicted of violent attacks against law enforcement.

Their comments then contain a 'but' or a 'however.' And they then compare it to the actions of President Biden. For example, here's Senator Markwayne Mullen, Republican from Oklahoma. And on January 21st, he was on CNN. And he did say he did not necessarily agree with Trump's decision to pardon all of the rioters.

But then he said he believes that any president has the right to issue pardons.

MARKWAYNE MULLEN: I have my personal feelings on it, but the American people have chose to move on. And President Trump, it's his prerogative to do this. He did not hide that he was going to pardon January 6th individuals that was wrongfully charged by the DOJ. I get what you're saying about the violent crimes.

However, that is still the president's prerogative, just like it was Joe Biden's prerogative to parole the 37 murders or commute their sentences. It is still the president's prerogative to do that. Regardless of you and I agree with it or not, the president has the authority.

And the American people chose to put President Trump in office by overwhelming support.

CHAKRABARTI: That's Senator Markwayne Mullen of Oklahoma. Paula, what do you think about that?

REID: Well, here's the thing about the presidential pardon power, unlike some of Trump's other moves, is it is absolute, and it is expansive, but this is not exactly what he said he would do.

Right. Both he and Vance and the speaker assured people that violent offenders would not be pardoned. And that is exactly what he did. So I don't think we can let him 'but Joe Biden,' his way out of that. But former President Biden did give them some political talking points. By saying repeatedly that he wouldn't pardon his son Hunter and then pardoning him instead of commuting a sentence or doing something else.

And then pardoning many members of his family. I mean, legally it doesn't make a difference. Trump had the power; Biden had the power. But politically, they use a lot of the moves that former President Biden made to justify their own more broad pardons. Even back two months ago, when I was talking to the Trump advisors about how they would do this.

And I said, look, this sounds like it's going to be pretty broad. Every time it would be, but Hunter Biden, didn't you see what he just did with Hunter Biden? It was as if he gave them like a political license to do whatever they wanted here. So again, legally, it doesn't make a difference, but politically they've definitely seized on the moves that Joe Biden made to justify.

You know, not doing what they said they would do.

CHAKRABARTI: Yeah. Well, Paula Reid, Chief Legal Correspondent for CNN. Thank you, Paula, for joining us as always.

REID: Thank you.

CHAKRABARTI: Mary, I want to put the last question to you. Because to me, it seems like belief in the rule of law is one of the key things that holds a democracy together, right?

Because we agree as a nation that we are going to abide by this broader system that's supposed to be equally applied to all of us. If that belief is frayed, what does that say? We just, I'm sorry, we've only got about 30 seconds left, Mary, but what does that say about our belief in the health or the legitimacy of our own democracy?

McCORD: Well, it raises a very dangerous prospect, right? Where are we going from here? And I just would like to close with a quote from one of the district court judges who then had to rule on a motion to dismiss one of the pending cases after the pardons. And you know, she said, no national injustice occurred here.

No process of national reconciliation can begin when poor losers whose preferred candidate loses an election are glorified for disrupting constitutionally mandated proceedings in Congress and doing so with impunity. That merely raises the dangerous specter of future lawless conduct by other poor losers and undermines the rule of law.