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From “The New York Times,” I’m Sabrina Tavernise, and this is “The Daily.”
- archived recording 1
Breach. We have a breach of the Capitol.
Since the riot on Capitol Hill four years ago —
- tucker carlson
They were peaceful. They were orderly and meek. These were not insurrectionists. They were sightseers.
— President-Elect Donald Trump and his allies have set out to sanitize the events of that day —
- tucker carlson
They’re not destroying the Capitol. They obviously revere the Capitol.
— changing it from a day of violence into, in Trump’s words —
- donald trump
That was a day of love.
—“a day of love.”
- donald trump
And it was love and peace.
As he prepares to take office for his second term, Trump said he plans to issue pardons to some of those responsible, throwing hundreds of criminal cases into doubt.
- donald trump
As everyone knows, it will be my great honor to pardon the peaceful January 6 protesters or, as I often call them, the hostages. They’re hostages.
Today, my colleague Allen Feuer talks to one of those rioters and explains how the pardons could help rewrite the story of what happened on January 6.
It’s Monday, January 6.
Alan, welcome back to the show.
Thanks for having me.
So, Alan, it’s been exactly four years since January 6. You’ve been our guide for understanding that day and the legal consequences for those involved. Donald Trump’s win, of course, throws those consequences into doubt. But before we get to how this landscape might all be about to change, let’s start with the basics. So as of today, January 6, 2025, give us a summary of where things stand with the legal cases of the people who participated.
Sure. So this has been really my full-time job since January 6, 2021. And just to take a quick detour here, there’s not just the criminal cases that we’re talking about. There are other efforts that have taken place to kind of figure out what happened on January 6. Let’s not forget, Donald Trump’s second impeachment was all about his role in inciting the riot at the Capitol.
There was a very expansive congressional investigation into this. And then, of course, there’s what you’re talking about, the Justice Department’s criminal cases that have been brought with regard to January 6. And that is the largest single investigation in the history of the Justice Department.
Wow, interesting.
Yeah. And this has involved enormous amounts of visual evidence and witness evidence and the cell phone seized and tips from ordinary people around the country. It’s really been an unprecedented and a massive undertaking by federal prosecutors. So at the moment, we have about 1,600 people who are facing criminal charges. And of those, most — so a little over a thousand — have either gone to trial or pled guilty.
But what’s been most remarkable about all of this is that of the more than 200 people who have gone to trial, only two have been acquitted fully. So when you look at this overall, the criminal justice system has rendered a pretty clear verdict about what happened on January 6. It was a day of violence and an attempt to impede a central act of American democracy that resulted in more than 140 police officers being injured, and also led to the deaths of four protesters.
And yet, despite all of those efforts, despite that very clear verdict to really make a historical record and to bring to account those who were responsible, here we are, right, four years later. And all of that is in doubt because President-Elect Donald Trump has a very different version of what happened on that day. And he’s promised on day one of his presidency, he said that he will pardon January 6 defendants on a case-by-case basis.
In fact, he said within the first hour of his presidency, he’d do that. So we come to you again today, Alan, to help us understand that and what the consequences would be if it happens.
Yeah, I’ve been trying to understand that myself. I mean, let’s think back here. You might remember that immediately after the attack, Donald Trump called January 6 — and I’m quoting — “a heinous attack on the United States Capitol.” And he promised that all the lawbreakers that day would pay.
But as I followed this story, I’ve watched that not only has Trump changed that narrative, changed his position on it, but that he’s done so almost in a kind of private dialogue with the rioters themselves. Collectively, it’s as if they’ve come up with an alternate reality to explain what happened on January 6.
And at least for me, I found that if you want to understand that other reality and all of the really important legal and political implications that emerge from it, you kind of have to get inside the dialogue that Trump was having with the January 6 rioters first.
Now, look, I mean, I found that most people who have been charged in these cases are not willing to do long, on-the-record interviews. But I did meet one guy who was willing to kind of sit down and walk me through his whole story with the idea of, hey, what’s going to happen if and when Trump issues pardons?
- alan feuer
Hi, Anthony.
- anthony vo
Hi, Alan.
Hi his name is Anthony Vo.
- anthony vo
I am currently 32 years old.
He’s kind of a young guy. He’s from Indiana, and he entered the Capitol on January 6, didn’t hurt anyone, didn’t break anything. And he was ultimately convicted at trial of four low-level misdemeanors, including disorderly conduct. So in that way, he’s actually pretty typical of most January 6 defendants, the majority of whom were charged with only relatively minor offenses, except for one thing.
- anthony vo
The moment, I am currently seeking refuge from the current United States government.
He’s on the run.
Like, from the law?
Yeah, like, he’s on the lam. He was supposed to report to prison after he got sentenced, and he just didn’t. He skipped.
Wow! That’s wild. Alan, do you normally talk to people who are on the run from the law?
Yeah, it’s happened a couple times.
[LAUGHS]: OK. So tell me more about Anthony.
Sure.
- anthony vo
I am a family of Vietnamese immigrants. They all came over legally from Vietnam.
So Anthony’s father fought alongside US troops during the war against the Viet Cong. And after the war, his family emigrated to the United States. And Anthony was born here.
- anthony vo
We just love this country and the, you know, the freedom and everything else that it symbolized for us coming from Vietnam.
His background might sound kind of surprising. But, actually, he’s got a pretty typical story for a Trump supporter.
- anthony vo
He gave me that persecution complex, which made me start paying attention to him.
He saw Trump as an outsider candidate in 2015.
- anthony vo
They accused him of being, like, sexist, racist, all these different things.
He doesn’t trust the mainstream media.
- anthony vo
Like, hang on. What’s going on? Why is the media, like, all seemingly coordinating against Trump with all these, like, demonstrably false headlines that are all out of context if you just, like, look into it a little bit more?
And flash forwarding to the 2020 election, election night arrives. And as we saw with a lot of Trump supporters, Anthony does not believe it’s true.
- anthony vo
You know, oh, new votes came in or whatever. Oh, man, there’s like a lot of gaming potential with these mail-in ballots. There’s a lot of, like, security gaps. Like, Pennsylvania, they illegally changed their voting deadlines. No signature verification was done for these ballots. So many different things, like, made me suspicious.
He’s just steeped in this world of election conspiracy theories, not that he would see it that way.
- anthony vo
It kind of, like, made me look for some sort of opportunity to do something about it. And I think in, like, December, they were talking about the Stop the Steal rally. Like, oh, you can come.
And he ultimately finds out that there’s going to be a pro-Trump Stop the Steal rally in Washington on January 6. And he’s like, yes.
- anthony vo
My mom and I heeded the call. And —
I want to be there. His family wants to go with him.
- anthony vo
Basically, we were just there to, like, make sure it was legit.
And he ends up joining a group of Vietnamese rally goers.
- anthony vo
People are giving out, like, Vietnamese bánh mi sandwiches to everyone. It was just, like, a excited fervor, I would say.
And so Anthony and his mom follow the crowd. And as he gets closer to the Capitol building itself, he notices people trying to go over the fence. But to him, at that point, it doesn’t really seem violent.
- anthony vo
You would hear booms, and every so often, you might smell some spice in the air. But, like, I never saw anything untoward in there.
And he ends up just walking with his mom right into the Capitol building.
- anthony vo
I remember my mom and I were just sitting on this bench. And we’re observing this guy in colonial regalia. He was playing the flute, “Amazing Grace” on the flute. People were just, like, sitting around, watching him.
And they have never been inside the Capitol before. And it’s quite a moving experience for them.
- anthony vo
When I walked in, it felt like a religious experience. Like, the rotunda dome, I find out later, is inspired by the same dome in Saint Peter’s Basilica. And going in, I was just, like, awash with, like, wow, this is glorious.
So, Alan, I was actually in the Capitol that day as well. I was covering this event for “The Times.” I had walked with the crowd to the Capitol, and then inside the Capitol with the rioters. And it was an interesting split screen because I saw people walking around kind of just, like, in awe, as you’re describing Anthony doing, you know, with selfie sticks, sitting in chairs, laughing, kind of like they were tourists at a tour of Capitol Hill.
But then I also saw people breaking windows. Obviously, there was a lot of violence there that day. And it just allowed everyone to emerge with their own story of what happened that day. Like, everyone had their own narrative, which, for them, was true. And it sounds like Anthony had his own narrative.
Yeah, yeah. I would agree with you entirely that not one thing happened on January 6. A lot of different things happened on January 6. But even the people who saw themselves as peaceful protesters contributed in some part to the larger chaos of what was essentially a riot that culminated in this historic and violent result. But, yes, Anthony had his own very particular story and version of events.
- anthony vo
I felt like it was a situation where, like, normally, you wouldn’t be allowed here. But I thought that this was, like, a very special opportunity that we earned to be able to exercise our rights. Like, the end of “V for Vendetta,” like, obviously, normally, like, those people wouldn’t be allowed to, like, do what they’re doing, like assemble and whatever in front of their parliament. But by massing together peacefully, for my eyes, they were able to make their voices heard.
In his mind, what he was doing was this kind of expression of democracy. He was out there petitioning the government, right? He wanted redress for his grievances.
Right.
That’s how he saw it. And I will never forget having read the FBI interview of one rioter, who actually was quite violent. But at the key moment, at the height of this interview, the guy kind of breaks down crying and tells these federal agents, I thought I was the good guy that day.
So Anthony and his mom stay for, like, 20, 30 minutes until basically they’re kicked out by a Capitol Police officer. Guy’s like, got to go. And they do. They leave the building, and they eventually make their way to the DC metro.
- anthony vo
I see the first, like, bits of news coming through my phone, like, all the initial headlines, like, rioters storm the Capitol. Rioters, like, block the vote or whatever. And all these things, like, they kind of caught me by surprise. So, like —
And he’s getting the news in real time from his phone about busted windows and beat-up cops and, you know, like, the real bad stuff, terrible stuff that happened that day. And, frankly, he says that he’s shocked about all that because it didn’t match his sort of personal window on January 6.
- anthony vo
So, like, when I was, like, reacting to it with friends on, like, social media, DMs, and such, I was basically mocking media about, like, oh yeah, we stormed the Capitol. It was like, we walked right in. I thought it was just, like, over-the-top embellishment. So I was just having fun with it.
- alan feuer
As you learned more about the day, did your feeling towards the day change in any measurable or important way?
- anthony vo
I did think that people were starting to say, like, this is, like, a big setup or whatever. And it did seem to be that way.
And what starts to happen is that not only does he cling to the idea that January 6 was not a violent event, but, in fact, he begins to develop this idea that all the violence that took place that day was the fault of others, not the rioters. It was police brutality. Or maybe this was all kind of a setup to begin with, right? Was the federal government itself not setting security perimeters in the right way? You know, like, where’s the National Guard? And these questions began to make him doubt the culpability — like, who’s responsible for the violence?
So despite the footage of the violence around the Capitol that day, Anthony is kind of sorting through it all and landing on a pretty different version of events, namely that the whole thing had been set up.
Yes, and that’s a quite common belief among January 6 defendants. And in the year after the attack, it really took hold in the broader right-wing media.
OK, so we know that’s not the end of Anthony’s story because he does eventually get arrested. When does that actually happen?
It’s about six months later, and he is picked up by a local FBI field office in Indiana.
- anthony vo
I think the first thing I said to, like, the officers was, like, oh, you got me. And I remember kind of thinking out loud to the two interviewing agents as I was, like, going through the paperwork and such. I was like, hmm, how can I beat this?
And so he ultimately goes to trial. He chooses to sort of put the government to his test.
- anthony vo
I was, like, staring in the mouth of a kangaroo court. But I just felt like I had to go with it anyway. I had to —
And during the trial, prosecutors end up citing text messages that Anthony sent after the 6th, saying things like, oh, the cops had it easy that day, and it would be easy to go back to the Capitol armed. He also makes a decision to attend a vigil that has been going on at the local Washington jail for years now. And that’s where many of the most violent January 6 defendants are being held on pretrial detention. It’s called the Freedom Corner.
- anthony vo
So I just wanted to go there and support the people that were stuck behind bars, awaiting their trial that they haven’t even received yet, suffering through, like, god knows what conditions.
And you have people who are flying flags and eating snacks. And they often call into the jail to talk to the inmates. And they live stream broadcasts with these inmates. But —
- anthony vo
Like, sleuths or whatever, like, on the live streams, like, started reporting me. And then I think —
— Anthony is not supposed to associate himself with any other January 6 defendants or people in that community. And so that decision on his part really irks Judge Tanya Chutkan, who is probably best known for having been the judge who was assigned to Trump’s own January 6 case. And she really kind of lays into Anthony about this particular issue.
So when it comes to the moment of, OK, he’s been found guilty, and now what’s your sentence? She ends up sentencing him to nine months in prison, which is — as far as these misdemeanor cases go, it’s on the high end.
But, of course, we know that he doesn’t ultimately report for his sentence.
That’s right. He decides, you know, it doesn’t matter what the judge has said or what the law says. He’s not turning himself in for what is supposed to be his date in June to start serving his prison term.
- anthony vo
A couple of my heroes were, like, Edward Snowden, Julian Assange, like, all these people that had to flee to, like, find safety or whatever.
And yet there’s one more thing that’s informing Anthony’s decision.
- archived recording 2
(SINGING) O say can you see
By the dawn’s early light
What so proudly —
Trump has started campaigning explicitly on a promise to pardon the January 6 rioters.
- anthony vo
Yeah, like, I remember of him, like, starting out —
- donald trump
I pledge allegiance —
- anthony vo
— campaign rally speeches, whatever, with the January 6 prisoner’s choir, reciting the national anthem.
- archived recording 2
(SINGING) — whose broad stripes and —
In fact, at the very first official rally that Trump holds for his re-election campaign, he takes the stage to a recording of the national anthem being performed by a choir of January 6 inmates. These are people who are in prison in Washington, DC, for crimes they committed on January 6.
- donald trump
Well, thank you very much. And you see the spirit from the hostages, and that’s what they are is hostages.
- anthony vo
Yeah, I remember hearing, like, we’re political hostages.
He’s calling them hostages. He’s calling them political prisoners.
- anthony vo
We’re being very unfairly treated by the weaponized justice system, as he has been as well. He would promise to, like, pardon the political prisoners.
- donald trump
The first day we get into office, we’re going to save our country, and we’re going to work with the people to treat those unbelievable patriots — and they were unbelievable patriots and are —
And Anthony is hearing that message and thinking it’s meant for him. Like, Trump is speaking to him.
Yeah, the Republican candidate for president is essentially validating Anthony’s version of events. And he thinks to himself, why should I report to prison? I think I can get a pardon. Of course, what happens next is that Trump wins the election.
- anthony vo
To me, it was like, I guess, light at the end of the tunnel. I was crying happy tears that night and the next few days afterwards.
And there’s this tidal wave of optimism among the January 6 defendants and their families. At the Freedom Corner, that vigil outside the jail that Anthony attended, they pop champagne bottles on election night. And you just saw this whole community being absolutely certain that Donald Trump was going to ride to their rescue and save them.
- anthony vo
When I first got arrested, I kind of knew that this was a thing that was going to be a process. Like, it’s going to take a lot of time, a lot of things to happen for the tide to turn.
And I was just going to take a lot of patience and a lot of work to be able to overcome it. But I think we’re all, like, stronger for it now.
We’ll be right back.
So Anthony and other participants are expecting pardons, and we have reason to believe that Trump will issue them. That’s what he says he’s going to do. So let’s talk about the logistics and the implications of this. First, the logistics, how exactly would this happen? Like, is it just a stroke of the pen?
I mean, basically, it is. The presidential pardon power is enormous. You know, Trump would just sort of write up an executive order or sign a document, and poof, it’s done.
Like magic.
Yeah. And so the debate now is really about the scope of the pardons that Trump is going to do. Is he going to issue a total blanket amnesty? Or is it going to be sort of more targeted to people like Anthony, who are sort of nonviolent, low-level misdemeanor defendants?
And they’re going to involve not just the sort of question of logistics, but really a political question. And that’s, how much of a hit does he want to really take if he’s going to issue pardons to people who, say, you know, hit a cop on the head with a 2-by-4, or, maybe even more so, issue pardons to members of far-right groups like the Proud Boys and Oath Keepers, who were found guilty of seditious conspiracy?
And do we have any indication of which way Trump is going to go?
That’s the problem with Trump. No, of course not. There’s recent polling that suggests that a majority of this country is not interested in pardoning January 6 defendants. But there’s this debate that has been sort of raging both on the outside — right? There’s advocates for the family members. And then that has sort of seeped into Trump’s inner circle. And I wouldn’t want to call it either way at this point.
Right. And as you’re saying, it could all happen with a stroke of a pen.
Absolutely.
Alan, it’s pretty remarkable that with all of this prosecutorial work that’s gone into this, to hold hundreds of people to account, all of this would be thrown out. And, of course, that’s important in its own right. But it does really set up the potential for a broader meaning here. Like, for example, what does it do to public trust in the legal system?
Oh, I think it would be quite destructive to the notion of the rule of law. Like I said, this is the largest investigation that the federal prosecutors have undertaken since the department was created in 1870.
Hmm, amazing.
And so to sort of — depending on the scope of these pardons, to sort of undo all that work in an eye blink, it’ll be somewhere between a gut punch and the rug being pulled out from under you. Choose your metaphor. And I think it could have a quite corrosive effect on trust in the system.
Right. And, of course, there’s another piece here, which we’ve kind of touched on, but I want to bring back in front of people, which is the story of what happened that day. Right? So to what extent do these pardons actually help the people who participated to help the president rewrite the story of what happened on January 6?
Well, see, that’s the remarkable thing. So from Trump’s point of view and from the defendants’ point of view, these pardons will not be a sort of attack the rule of law. They will be an upholding of the rule of law because these prosecutions, from their point of view, have been deemed unjust from the outset. And so if Trump does pardon these defendants, it will be his opportunity to kind of rewrite the entire story of what the Justice Department has been doing over the past four years.
And he will be able to sort of revise the story of the Justice Department seeking accountability for an attack on American democracy into positioning the Justice Department as the villains who are out to destroy democracy, in essence. And so it’s going to allow Trump to both have the imprimatur of the presidency to declare that, hey, no crimes were committed at all that day, or at least it’s going to allow him to sort of legally wash away the sins of many of the people who were involved in them.
But the crazy thing is, we have this whole record. I mean, beyond the prosecutions, we have all of these videos. We have this body cam stuff. In the modern internet age, there’s a record. So can the narrative just be flipped like that?
No. So you’re absolutely right. In this internet age, there’s tens of thousands of hours of January 6 video out there. And, in fact, there are people who have been intimately involved in scouring and cataloging that video, who are right now making sure that it doesn’t disappear, that that record, that bulwark of reality exists.
We’ve also seen in recent weeks some of the federal judges in Washington who have heard these cases and know them better than anyone have kind of stood up in public, in written and oral rulings against the idea that January 6 was a nothing event. They have defended the seriousness of that day in quite remarkable public utterances.
Interesting.
Actually, let me read one right here. It’s from a sentencing memo by a judge named Royce Lamberth, who was actually a conservative Republican appointed by Ronald Reagan. It says, “I have been dismayed to see distortions and outright falsehoods seep into the public consciousness. I have been shocked to watch some public figures try to rewrite history, claiming rioters behaved in, quote, ‘an orderly fashion,’ unquote, like ordinary tourists, or martyrizing convicted January 6 defendants as political prisoners or even, incredibly, hostages. That is all preposterous.”
But at the same time, yes, we live in a siloed information world where people sort of see what they want to see. And so there will now be a bubble that exists that sort of has the stamp of approval from the president on it that nothing bad happened on January 6.
Alan, it’s really incredible to be watching this happen in the United States. I know comparisons are tricky, but I spent a lot of my early career in Russia. And that’s a place that’s really quite expert at whitewashing and just having an alternative reality version of history. You know Stalin is seen by many in Russia as the leader who made Russia great. And the fact that millions of people died of starvation and in mass executions, that’s just not the dominant story or really part of the story at all at this point, in part because people don’t want to see it that way. So this all feels very familiar to me in quite an eerie way.
I mean, look, we don’t know what’s going to be the final verdict about all of this. But there is a kind of Soviet aspect to sort of erasing all of this, right? That is not how the January 6 defendants obviously see it. They see this as the lifting almost of Soviet oppression on them.
Yeah.
And so that’s why there has been this tug of war all along. Now, who’s going to win that war? And which version will eventually sort of emerge as victorious? I don’t know. That’s above my pay grade. But these tensions about the meaning of January 6 have been there. And there are practical ramifications to all of this.
I think a lot of what the erasure or revision of the January 6 story could do for Trump is that it’s not only going to diminish the culpability of his supporters who were involved in the attack or, of course, diminish his own culpability. But it could do something else. It could provide him with the kind of ideological ground to move forward into fulfilling his own promises to seek revenge on those of his enemies who took part in the attempts to hold him accountable for January 6.
And that’s already starting to happen, right?
It’s absolutely already starting to happen. Just recently, Trump’s congressional allies released a report recommending that Liz Cheney, the former Wyoming Congresswoman who was the vice chair of the January 6 committee that recommended that Trump be charged with crimes in connection with January 6, should herself face an FBI investigation.
And Trump is also seeking to install loyalists in the FBI and the Justice Department, who may indeed carry that out in the end. I mean, I think these things are not unrelated. When you position yourself as the victim, you then have the moral standing to seek retribution against your enemies. If you rewrite the history of what happened on January 6, it allows you to change the heroes to villains, the villains to heroes.
I mean, Anthony is certainly well aware of this. After our interview, he told me he’s now in Canada. He’s formally asked for asylum there. But he’s also kind of just biding his time, waiting around until Trump comes back into office. And he really does seem to believe not only that the winners write history, but that he and the other January 6 defendants are themselves poised to be the winners, that they are now in a position to write what could be the final chapter on January 6.
- anthony vo
There’s a meme that’s been circulating around for probably at least a few months, years now, saying January 6 will go down in history as a day the government staged a riot to cover up the fact that they certified a fraudulent election. And I think that’s how history will remember January 6.
- alan feuer
And you believe that?
- anthony vo
I do.
- alan feuer
And you believe that history will believe that?
- anthony vo
Yeah.
Alan, thank you.
Thanks for having me.
We’ll be right back.
Here’s what else you should know today.
- archived recording 3
Distinguished guests, the President of the United States and Dr. Biden.
Over the weekend, for his final time in office, Joe Biden bestowed the Presidential Medal of Freedom, the nation’s highest civilian honor.
- archived recording 3
Hillary Rodham Clinton.
[CHEERING]
In doing so, he singled out several public foes of his successor, President-Elect Donald Trump, including Hillary Rodham Clinton, Trump’s Democratic opponent in 2016.
- archived recording 3
As a lawyer, she defended the rights of children. As first lady, she fought for universal health care and declared women’s rights are human rights. As Senator, she helped —
And George Soros, the activist liberal billionaire who Trump and his allies have mocked for years.
- archived recording 3
Born into a Jewish family in Hungary, George Soros escaped Nazi occupation to build a life of freedom for himself and countless others around the world. Educated in England —
For Biden, the ceremony was an unmistakable message of support for a political and financial establishment that Trump is eager to replace in the coming months.
- joe biden
Congratulations, but let’s remember, our sacred effort continues. Have to keep going. As my mother would say, we got to keep the faith. God bless you all, and may God protect our troops. Please enjoy the —
[MUSIC PLAYING]
Today’s episode was produced by Asthaa Chaturvedi and Mooj Zadie, with help from Nina Feldman, Eric Krupke, and Mary Wilson. It was edited by Michael Benoist. Research assistance by Susan Lee. Contains original music by Dan Powell, Marion Lozano, and Sophia Lanman, and was engineered by Alyssa Moxley, with help from Carole Saboraud. Our theme music is by Jim Brunberg and Ben Landsverk of Wonderly.
That’s it for “The Daily.” I’m Sabrina Tavernise. See you tomorrow.