On his first full day as a declared presidential candidate, Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis (R) made it even clearer that he plans to run as an echo rather than an alternative to Donald Trump: He said he would consider pardoning people involved in the Jan. 6, 2021, Capitol insurrection.
Mr. DeSantis offered a false equivalence as his rationale, claiming that right-wing extremists convicted of crimes for which Black Lives Matter protesters were not prosecuted were victims of an “uneven application of justice.”
But no parallel should be drawn to what was an armed attempt to subvert the U.S. system of government. Mr. DeSantis has repeatedly declined to answer directly whether Joe Biden was legally elected in 2020. He also disputed that the events of Jan. 6 constituted an insurrection, campaigned with election deniers in 2022 and even appointed someone who entered the Capitol on Jan. 6 as a state regulator in Florida.
Mr. DeSantis’s latest effort to indulge the MAGA fantasy that the insurrectionists’ actions could be justified came the same day that Oath Keepers founder Stewart Rhodes was sentenced to 18 years in prison for seditious conspiracy, the longest prison term yet related to the Capitol insurrection. Mr. Rhodes showed no remorse during a speech to the court. U.S. District Judge Amit P. Mehta told the defendant that he presents “an ongoing threat and a peril to this country, to the republic and the very fabric of our democracy.” The judge also warned that Mr. Rhodes “will be prepared to take up arms” against the government the moment he is released.
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End of carousel- D.C. Council reverses itself on school resource officers. Good.
- Virginia makes a mistake by pulling out of an election fraud detection group.
- Vietnam sentences another democracy activist.
- Biden has a new border plan.
The D.C. Council voted on Tuesday to stop pulling police officers out of schools, a big win for student safety. Parents and principals overwhelmingly support keeping school resource officers around because they help de-escalate violent situations. D.C. joins a growing number of jurisdictions, from Montgomery County, Md., to Denver, in reversing course after withdrawing officers from school grounds following George Floyd’s murder. Read our recent editorial on why D.C. needs SROs.
Gov. Glenn Youngkin (R) just withdrew Virginia from a data-sharing consortium, ERIC, that made the commonwealth’s elections more secure, following Republicans in seven other states in falling prey to disinformation peddled by election deniers. Former GOP governor Robert F. McDonnell made Virginia a founding member of ERIC in 2012, and until recently conservatives touted the group as a tool to combat voter fraud. D.C. and Maryland plan to remain. Read our recent editorial on ERIC.
In Vietnam, a one-party state, democracy activist Tran Van Bang was sentenced on Friday to eight years in prison and three years probation for writing 39 Facebook posts. The court claimed he had defamed the state in his writings, according to Radio Free Asia. In the past six years, at least 60 bloggers and activists have been sentenced to between 4 and 15 years in prison under the law, Human Rights Watch found. Read more of the Editorial Board’s coverage on autocracy and Vietnam.
The Department of Homeland Security has provided details of a plan to prevent a migrant surge along the southern border. The administration would presumptively deny asylum to migrants who failed to seek it in a third country en route — unless they face “an extreme and imminent threat” of rape, kidnapping, torture or murder. Critics allege that this is akin to an illegal Trump-era policy. In fact, President Biden is acting lawfully in response to what was fast becoming an unmanageable flow at the border. Read our most recent editorial on the U.S. asylum system.
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The lack of remorse is part of a troubling pattern. On Wednesday, a judge sentenced to 4½ years in prison the Jan. 6 rioter who was photographed with his foot propped on a desk in then-House Speaker Nancy Pelosi’s offices. Richard “Bigo” Barnett carried with him inside the Capitol a 950,000-volt stun device concealed in a walking stick. Mr. Barnett stayed defiant through his trial. On social media this month, he referred to Capitol police as thugs and attacked federal prosecutors as “demonically possessed cretans [sic].”
More than 1,000 people have been arrested in nearly all 50 states for the attack on the Capitol. According to the Justice Department, approximately 570 of them have pleaded guilty and 78 have been found guilty at trial. The FBI continues to seek the public’s help in identifying 221 individuals believed to have committed violent acts on the Capitol grounds that day.
Floating pardons gives Jan. 6 rioters hope that they won’t be held accountable. Comments from Mr. Trump and Mr. DeSantis, the two leading contenders for the 2024 Republican nomination, will discourage plea deals and encourage defendants to drag out proceedings in hopes that they might get clemency in 20 months. It also heightens the danger that people will again engage in violence if they don’t like the outcome of next year’s elections, calculating that they might receive pardons if their preferred candidate takes power.