SCOTT DETROW, HOST:
Tomorrow marks the four-year anniversary of the January 6, 2021, attack on the U.S. Capitol. And for many of the people who stormed the building in an attempt to stop Congress from certifying Joe Biden’s win as president, tomorrow is a day of vindication. Tomorrow, Congress will certify Donald Trump as president. And once he takes office in a few weeks, Trump has promised to pardon people charged with crimes for their roles in the January 6 attack. Trump’s own criminal charges tied to that day have been dismissed since winning the White House. And we wanted to take a few minutes to step back and talk about all of this with Tom Dreisbach, who has taken a leading role in NPR’s coverage of January 6 and its aftermath. Hey, Tom.
TOM DREISBACH, BYLINE: Hey, Scott.
DETROW: As we think about the scope of all of this, how many people in the end ultimately faced charges or were convicted or pleaded guilty?
DREISBACH: Yeah. So NPR has been tracking every single criminal case that has stemmed from the January 6 attack. We have a database that people can visit on our website. And by our numbers, more than 1,500 people were ultimately charged. The majority of those, about 1,000, ended up pleading guilty to those charges. And a few hundred ultimately took their cases to trial. The vast majority were convicted. And the investigation has been ongoing. The FBI has still been on the lookout for multiple suspects who were accused of assaulting police, and arrests were happening, you know, through December.
DETROW: And let’s get back to what I mentioned in introduction, many of the people who stormed the Capitol said that the former and now future president Donald Trump inspired them to carry out those violent acts in their push to keep him in power. Now we’ve come full circle. Trump is poised to take power again. What exactly are his plans? What has he said? What has he not said about these pardons?
DREISBACH: Well, Trump kind of ran his campaign – I think of it as, honestly, the January 6 election in a way because his campaign launched with a version of “The Star-Spangled Banner” as sung by January 6 defendants recorded on a jailhouse phone. And he has repeatedly promised to pardon or commute the sentences of January 6 defendants. Now, the scope of that promise is really vague. He has never been pinned down on exactly whom he would pardon. He was asked last year at the National Association of Black Journalists whether he would pardon people convicted of assaulting police. That was a big open question. And he said yes. He would pardon people who were convicted of assaulting police.
The Trump transition team told me that they were going to pardon people who were unjustly prosecuted by what they called a weaponized Justice Department and who were denied due process. But they didn’t give any specifics. And, of course, all of these defendants had the right to an attorney when they went through the whole criminal trial system. So it’s unclear what they mean by denied due process.
DETROW: Yeah. He’s also said in recent interviews this is something that he could announce or start to work on as soon as his first day in office.
DREISBACH: That’s right.
DETROW: You’ve spent time with the family of a police officer who was assaulted and died the next day – curious how they feel about this, about the president’s plans to pardon people convicted of these violent crimes.
DREISBACH: Yeah, I recently spent some time with the family of Capitol Police Officer Brian Sicknick. He was pepper sprayed on January 6, and that night, he collapsed in the U.S. Capitol, was rushed to the hospital nonresponsive, and he subsequently died of two strokes. And his family is frankly devastated by the results of the presidential election. They are really concerned that the man who assaulted their son, who they went to the sentencing for and kind of confronted him in the courtroom – they are really concerned that that person is going to be set free. Brian Sicknick’s mother, Gladys, told me that she’s just bursting out into tears at various times because she is so upset about what happens, and they told me that their faith in the country has really been shaken.
DETROW: There’s the facts of what happened on January 6, and there’s the attempt to change the narrative, which really began almost instantaneously in some corners and really gained steam politically over the last few years, especially with the results of the last election. These cases, though, they really played a key role in creating a historical record of what happened. I’m curious what you think, as somebody who covered them – if Trump does hand out these pardons, do you think that changes how January 6 will be remembered?
DREISBACH: Well, yeah, the history of January 6 has always been contested in a way. I mean, there was a brief moment of what felt like consensus, at least on Capitol Hill. You know, you had the Senate Republican Leader Mitch McConnell saying that January 6 was an act of domestic terrorism for which Donald Trump was practically and morally responsible. Those were his words. And now, of course, the Republican Party is lockstep in behind Trump. And Trump has embraced this counternarrative that January 6 was, at worst, a group of people who got a little bit out of hand, but they were peaceful protesters who have been unjustly prosecuted by the Biden administration and the Department of Justice.
One of the ironies of covering this – over the course of the criminal cases, we’ve only learned worse facts about what happened on January 6. We’ve seen more videos of violence against police. We’ve seen more evidence of how close the country came to even worse violence. We’ve learned that rioters went to the Capitol with guns. This is something that Trump has said – no one had guns on January 6 except for the police. That is not true. Now what happens in the future if Trump pardons, you know, as many as 1,500-plus people? It’s unclear. You know, this country is deeply divided, can’t agree on a lot of things. The narrative of – around January 6, I think, will continue to be contested, even as the facts paint an extremely concerning portrait of serious violence at the people’s house, the United States Capitol.
DETROW: That is NPR investigative correspondent Tom Dreisbach. Tom, thanks so much.
DREISBACH: Thanks so much, Scott.
Copyright © 2025 NPR. All rights reserved. Visit our website terms of use and permissions pages at www.npr.org for further information.
NPR transcripts are created on a rush deadline by an NPR contractor. This text may not be in its final form and may be updated or revised in the future. Accuracy and availability may vary. The authoritative record of NPR’s programming is the audio record.
