- who, among other things, erected a noose on the capitol grounds, brought zip ties and weapons
- forcefully overran several capital police barricades intended to deter their entrance
- used any weapon available including poles etc to violently attack any police in their way
Granted they did not explicitly shoot any federal agents with a firearm, but in the J6 case, I’d say I’d lay blame for the subsequent deaths of the police officers who did die at the hands of the rioters.
To be clear I do not condone violence in either case.
However those 1000+ individuals on January 6 were ultimately pardoned for their actions. The family of one was in fact paid $5 million in taxpayer money because she was shot in a vain attempt to repel the crowd.
Why then should these defendants be treated completely differently? One gets the law, the other has their convictions overturned completely and history rewritten in their favor.
Btw I do not believe the individual who was charged in the article shot the federal agent or was part of the “concealed position” etc. So bringing that up is just an appeal to brush that individual with the actions of others.
Yeah but imagine if you were also sentenced for 30 years not because you were there on January 6th but because your friend who was there asked you to pick up all those MAGA hats from his home.
It's shameful how the Jan 6th rioters went unpunished (well, had their punishment cut short), but it's also not good to repeat false claims. Brian Sicknick died of a stroke the next day, but the medical examiner determined that this was not caused by Sicknick being pepper sprayed the previous day:
https://www.nytimes.com/2021/04/19/us/politics/brian-sicknic...
The other four police officers said to have been killed in this root committed suicide over the next several months, which really cannot be attributed to the riot in an intellectually honest way. Imagine if someone said "BLM murdered dozens of cops" and then listed the suicide of every cop that had some interaction with BLM and committed suicide 6+ months afterwards.
This isn't to minimize the crimes of Jan 6th rioters and their attempt to overturn an election, but it's still best not to repeat false claims.
Where did I say it is?
I said it's the same assault as ICE protestors and either both should be jailed or both should be pardoned, but pick one of these lane, because otherwise it's just selective enforcement.
Shifting the goal posts. I’m talking about the selective prosecution and you’ve tried to equate that with hn sentiment. Does it really matter what the double standard is for a bunch of keyboard warriors arguing over imaginary internet points? No! But it makes a shit ton of difference when the state, with a monopoly on violence and justice, makes a public showing over its double standard. That double standard has impacts on the freedom and lives of people.
And your nihilism is exactly how we got into this mess in the first place. “They all suck, so why not elect the clown and see how much he can shake things up”.
So again the hn hypocrisy doesn’t matter. The only thing on the line for me is whether my imaginary internet points balance increases or decreases.
The feds on the other hand have the power to send you to federal prison or to pardon you and literally pay you off.
Given that we don’t have God himself running for president, we have to suffice with imperfect representation. And so yes I end up picking a side because that’s the system we have at the moment.
As to your point about “picking sides” - why aren’t you upset about the pardons yourself in that matter? Shouldn’t they be held accountable?
HN is a collection of people with varying viewpoints and backgrounds posting arbitrarily throughout the day. There is no single position to be hypocritical of.
The “Hypocrisy” you are experiencing here is just you having to sort through other people’s opinions and getting upset at the ones that disagree with yours.
I actually don’t view Biden pardoning his son or Fauci(lol at the covid craziness still coming out) anywhere nearly as badly as a President pardoning people who disrupted a ~245 year uninterrupted peaceful transfer of power that was one of our greatest accomplishments as a nation, especially when said President doing the pardon was the one the J6s were trying to overturn the election for.
If you think those things are equivalent well then, there are many things I’d say about you but I’ve been told by the mods that’s not allowed.
You realize that there multiple armed contingents planning and organizing to literally raid the Capitol for J6 right? That's why the pround boys were a focus of much of the investigation.
Ugh let’s not get all conspiracy theory up in here. Show me real evidence of that and I’ll believe you.
Until then - to say at the same time - the Feds are so incompetent and also the Feds are organizing an elaborate secret network of agitators to be at all major protests and riots - let’s just say the logic doesn’t logic.
>Ugh let’s not get all conspiracy theory up in here. Show me real evidence of that and I’ll believe you.
Um, like half of all these "attack the government in some capacity" plots in the last 40yr. Probably more if you count all the "radical islamic terrorists" they riled up in the 00s and 10s when that was the cool thing for law enforcement to be entrapping.
The Michigan Fednapping is probably the most hilarious case since it turned out there were more feds than not who were in on it.
Trump helped organize and encourage the January 6th insurrection. He was president during the insurrection. So yes, there was a lot of federal Republican help during that one.
For clarity, only people who died on Jan 6th were protestors. The police officer who died on the 7th had a stroke. The two who died later were suicides. It’s negligent to conceal these facts.
(Note for clarity, almost everybody posting in this thread on every side is doing this kind of thing. Just move on to the “years of lead” phase already.)
What would you suggest? There are real divisions in this country and a lack of shared ground truth. This thread among many is an example.
I vouched for your earlier comment stating the proximate cause of death for those involved in January 6 because you’re correct.
Still, it’s hard for me to then say with a straight face that, for example, officer sicknick would have died of a stroke if the riot didn’t happen.
That said, nobody was charged with murder or manslaughter in connection with his death, and I respect that even if it doesn’t feel just. Either way, god bless his soul and the other officers who tragically took their own lives.
I don’t know what to suggest, because it’s become commonplace to lie and distort the truth among both sides. Neither one will likely stop doing it because that might give the other side an advantage.
I would say that non-partisans should hold them to account, but that’s only possible if you’re not overly concerned about the penalty for doing so. Doing this in person could lead you to catch a beating, which is ridiculous.
Somewhere there is a crown lying in the gutter with the words “The Truth” written on it. Someone could pick it up and start using it at any time, and everyone would love it. The only problem is that this person would need a strong network with powerful backers before they pick up that crown, because too many powerful people benefit when the public believes in lies. So maybe the starting point is building that network. A network of people willing to face hard truths, and to defend those truths once someone starts bringing them forward.
I’m not sure it’s possible. Americans love lying and being lied to.
For the record, I think all the deaths connected with the event were tragic, including both the protestors and officers.
The different scale of intention was to overturn the results of a federal general election, effectively a coup to seize back control over the government. I can see why you consider the incident in Texas to be terrorism, but you want to ignore the entire point of the J6 event and pretend it was just some normal event where a few participants got a little out of hand? Get real.
So in that case, what were they there to do, exactly?
Don't forget, an actual noose was erected on the capitol grounds: https://www.nytimes.com/2022/06/16/us/politics/jan-6-gallows.... Do I think they intended to literally drag Mike Pence out and physically hang him? No. But damned if that doesn't send a clear message.
I'm not defending them, I'm just pointing out that the two things aren't equivalent.
And yeah, sure, the message was that they thought he was a traitor. I don't agree with them on that and I certainly don't agree that's a good way to send that message. My point is that if a bunch of conservatives want to do an actual coup they would be armed to the damned teeth.
There were lots of Jan 6 weapons related convictions:
"180 defendants were charged with entering a restricted area with a dangerous or deadly weapon, which includes firearms and other types of weapons." [0]
What you described as a riot is considered by others to be part of a "fake electors" plot, to keep Trump in power after he lost the election [1], a plot which Pence didn't go along with. Trump even tweeted that day about it:
"If Vice President @Mike_Pence comes through for us, we will win the Presidency." [2]
This is the most stupid refutation, surely you can do better.
Besides the fact that several of them did bring guns or have them standing by, the ones focused on trying to derail the transfer of power were aware in advance that DC had very strict gun laws and were worried about getting caught before establishing momentum.
Even setting that aside, do you really expect people to believe Donald Trump decided to organize a giant rally, tweeting out 'Be there, will dbe wild!' for that location on January 6 just by chance? Staging the rally at the Ellipse in DC and getting large numbers of diehard MAGA people to attend cost several million dollars, are you seriously asking me to believe that it never occurred to any of the organizers or speakers that the certification of the election just happened to be taking place a short walk away? That when Trump suggested they would all walk up to the Capitol, what he expected was for people to mill around aimlessly for a while and then go home?
"I know that everyone here will soon be marching over to the Capitol building to peacefully and patriotically make your voices heard."
"By the way, Pennsylvania has now seen all of this. They didn't know because it was so quick. They had a vote. They voted. But now they see all this stuff, it's all come to light. Doesn't happen that fast. And they want to recertify their votes. They want to recertify. But the only way that can happen is if Mike Pence agrees to send it back. Mike Pence has to agree to send it back.
(Audience chants: "Send it back.")"
"
The Democrats are hopeless — they never vote for anything. Not even one vote. But we're going to try and give our Republicans, the weak ones because the strong ones don't need any of our help. We're going to try and give them the kind of pride and boldness that they need to take back our country."
What he hoped was that the protest would show that there was a ton of support for his position that the election had been stolen and for the relevant people to take that into account.
So you're saying he expected them to mill about aimlessly chanting or whatever, and that Pence/the senators would somehow treat this as a revelation? Total BS. You're asking me to forget all the heated rhetoric leading up to and even during the event (eg Rudy Giuliani telling people to fight or they won't have a country any more).
If your version of events were true, why didn't Trump put out a message to calm down his supporters within minutes of the situation devolving into a riot, rather than hours later? What prevented him tweeting 'No, stop - I said peacefully and patriotically: No violence! PLEASE LEAVE THE CAPITOL IMMEDIATELY'?
It's not other people's job to jump through hoops to meet your chosen metric, apparently defined in ignorance of the facts. The crowd left the Capitol because Trump eventually put out a video statement telling his supporters to go home, well after the Senate chamber had been evacuated and taken over by rioters.
Testimony from within the White House indicates a large number of people worked to persuade him to issue such a statement, perhaps convincing him that he would not have the support of many cabinet members of aides otherwise. We can only speculate on what might have happened if he had told his supporters to stand their ground.
Fwiw some of the people sentenced to decades in prison went home before your bullet points happened.
And although the second amendment may not cover first aid kits, that's a super lame justification for sending people to prison for the rest of their lives. I guess it's a good thing Boy Scout troops don't coordinate over signal or they'd all be locked up.
I don't know what they signal chats were, but ignoring those, only the last one of those I view as a crime. This is the US, people have second amendment rights and are allowed to possess guns and armed protestors have been a thing since forever. It is also a good idea to wear body armor when you are hanging around any US law enforcement or cops, doubly so when protesting them. Carrying a first aid kit is just a good idea in general, especially for something like a protest, and again for one where cops are likely to be shooting rubber bullets and tear gas canisters at people.
I do want violent criminals prosecuted. But the problem is that there is a very clear signal given that prosecution is highly selective.
I made my point earlier - if this administration cared about prosecuting violent criminals, they would never have even considered pardoning the J6 criminals. They would additionally call for swift and thorough investigations on the use of force against the killings of protesters in Minneapolis in order to ensure that law enforcement is seen as accountable to the public.
But none of that has happened. And won’t happen. It astounds me that this hypocrisy isn’t screaming like nails on a chalkboard!
The J6 crowd broke into and overran the legislature to prevent the Constitutional transfer of power from one President to another, following a rally organized by the President that was about to lose power. You are talking like it was a coincidence that they just happened to be there and spontaneously decided to do some trespassing for fun.
If you constrain your analysis to: who is a violent actor, and how severe was the violent act in question, I think you can produce a more reasonable comment tbf.
OK. Let's look at this case of a guy who actually murdered a security guard at a federal building in cold blood, for political reasons, in a drive-by shooting that was organized in advance using the internet. He got 41 years, vs this other guy getting 100 years for attempted murder.
Ok sure not every of the 1500 people pardoned by Trump could be considered “violent”. Have you watched the videos? There’s definitely more than one.
And you’re shifting the goalposts by implying (falsely) that the person covered in the article also personally committed all the offences you mentioned earlier, including shooting a federal officer.
And don’t just take my word for it. There is a good amount of recidivism by those who received pardons. Almost 100 have subsequently been charged with other crimes, including child molestation. I’d consider someone who, after getting pardoned for the j6 riot, continuing on to diddle kids, a violent criminal.
> Perhaps most strikingly, five recipients of presidential clemency were arrested in connection with conduct that occurred at least in part subsequent to Trump’s freeing them from prison—meaning that Trump’s clemency order on the first day of his second term may have actively facilitated criminal conduct. These include:
> Andrew Paul Johnson, who was freed from prison as a result of the pardon in 2025, was convicted of five charges, including child molestation, in February 2026, and sentenced to life in prison. The criminal conduct for which he was convicted took place both before and after his pardon.
> Zachary Alam, who was convicted of felony charges of grand larceny and burglary just months after his pardon.
> Ryan Nichols, who was charged with deadly conduct and harassment on May 10, 2026, after allegedly threatening a person with a gun in a church parking lot.
> If you want to concede that it's fascist to want violent criminals prosecuted,
I believe it is fascist to bring trumped up charges for ridiculousness. Say for example the case of “sandwich guy” who the DoJ spent three attempts at a grand jury to bring federal charges. For throwing a fully loaded Subway sandwich at a kitted out ICE officer.
> I think if you append "with the intention to commit a violent crime" to each item on the list, you'll see the issue.
That's problematic as you could literally append that to any action and thus condemn it as illegal e.g. met to have some coffees and a chat ... with the intention to commit a violent crime.
The problem is that there's not necessarily any connection between the activity and the alleged violent crime - that's what needs to be proven such as highlighting specific signal conversations that were evidence of planning the crime.
Also, what is problematic about first aid kits? How is being in a "concealed" position problematic?
My point is that there has to be evidence to link the "meeting up for coffee" and the commission of a crime. If a group of people meet for coffee and then later one of them commits a crime, it's not necessarily a conspiracy to commit that crime unless there's evidence (e.g. recorded conversation or witnesses) that the crime was being discussed and planned whilst having a coffee.
Simply appending the phrase "with the intention to commit a violent crime" should not be allowed without evidence of that intention.
ICE has behaved as violent criminals during Trump's 2nd term. Renee Good and Alex Pretty were murders. There have been other shootings ICE initiated. How many have died in ICE facilities under suspicious circumstances?
> I think if you append "with the intention to commit a violent crime" to each item on the list, you'll see the issue.
No, that doesn't fly, and the intent isn't clear. Even if there were intent, those three bullet points still are not an crime or valid charges. As a member of the jury, I would reject them 100%.
Extending your pitiful logic just a few steps, people would be locked up for 30 years just for being born.
> If you want to concede that it's fascist to want violent criminals prosectued
No relation. Violent crime must of course be prosecuted, but it shouldn't have to depend on trumped up charges or weak accusations of intent.
The actual members of the jury convicted the defendants though, accepting the .gov's evidence and witnesses that these individually innocuous elements together established their links to each other, collectively murdering an officer in the course of an attack.
