Former Proud Boys leader and Oath Keepers founder released after Trump offers Jan. 6 clemency

Contributing sentiments towards policy:

42% : Trump also ordered the attorney general to seek the dismissal of roughly 450 cases that were still pending before judges.
41% : Trump made rewriting the history of the Jan. 6 attack a centerpiece of his bid to return to the White House, and the pardon of the rioters fulfills a campaign pledge to free defendants he contends were politically persecuted by the Justice Department.
41% : "Trump had suggested in the weeks leading up to his return to the White House that instead of blanket pardons, he would look at the Jan. 6 defendants on a case-by-case basis.
31% : Their attorneys confirmed to The Associated Press on Tuesday they had been released hours after Trump pardoned, commuted the sentences of or ordered the dismissal of cases against all the 1,500-plus people who were charged with federal crimes in the riot.
30% : Tarrio, who led the neofacist Proud Boys group as it became a force in mainstream Republican circles, was convicted in 2023 of seditious conspiracy and other crimes after a monthslong trial on allegations that he orchestrated violence to overturn Biden's 2020 victory over Trump.
29% : Trump said the pardons will end "a grave national injustice that has been perpetrated upon the American people over the last four years" and begin "a process of national reconciliation.
27% : Rhodes was convicted in a separate trial alongside members of his far-right militia group who prosecutors alleged were intent on keeping Trump in power at all costs.
14% : Rhodes, of Granbury, Texas, was serving an 18-year prison sentence, and Tarrio, of Miami, was serving a 22-year sentence after they were convicted of orchestrating plots to stop the peaceful transfer of power after Trump, a Republican, lost the 2020 election to Democrat Joe Biden.
8% : Over seven weeks of testimony, jurors heard how Rhodes rallied his followers to fight to defend Trump, discussed the prospect of a "bloody" civil war and warned that the Oath Keepers may have to "rise up in insurrection" to defeat Biden if Trump didn't act.

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