We used to honor our heroic defenders — Trump’s Jan. 6 pardons ended that

The evidence of the battle that raged on one of the darkest days in American history — Jan. 6, 2021 — is gone. The bloodstains have been scrubbed off. The smashed windows, broken doors and damaged historical murals and statues have been repaired. Ordinarily, tour guides would describe what had happened there, but they have been told not even to mention it.

Trump’s grant of clemency to the Jan. 6 convicted criminals — more than 1,500 pardons and 14 commutations — was only part of an official memory erasure of the gallant defense by the Capitol and D.C. police of American democracy, the Capitol building, the vice president and his wife, and hundreds of senators, congressmen, staffers and others.

Among the recipients of clemency were 169 people who pleaded guilty to assaulting police officers defending the Capitol. According to Trump’s proclamation, however, his clemency corrected a “grave national injustice.” The rioters, in other words, were the victims that day, which makes the police officers the villains.

Trump’s proclamation was issued in the face of graphic, horrifying footage showing rioters breaking into the Capitol and assaulting 140 police officers with, among other weapons, pitchforks, a metal whip, a tomahawk ax, bear spray and stun guns, severely injuring many. Capitol Police Officer Brian D. Sicknick died the next day from his injuries.

Have you heard the joke about the man who denies cheating on his wife even after she catches him in bed with another woman? The man says to his wife, “Who are you going to believe, me or your own lying eyes?” It’s not amusing now that the joke is the official policy of the Trump administration in insisting that the Jan. 6 convictions were an injustice.

A day after the pardons, House Speaker Mike Johnson (R-La.) continued the memory wipe. He announced the formation of a select subcommittee to investigate Jan. 6 which, he promised, will “uncover the full truth owed to the American people.” Johnson defines that “full truth” by saying that “peaceful protests and people who engage in that should never be punished.”

Here is one example, among many, of what Johnson apparently claims was a “peaceful protest” on Jan. 6. David Dempsey, a man from Van Nuys, California with a history of violent protests, was among those who stormed the Capitol. He beat one policemen’s head with a crutch so severely that it left the policeman with a concussion. Dempsey sprayed bear spray directly under the face shield and into the face of another policeman, who thought of his family because he believed he was about to die.

After pleading guilty to two counts of assaulting police with deadly or dangerous weapons in the Capitol attack, Dempsey was sentenced to 20 years in prison. Thanks to Trump’s pardon, he is out on the streets and officially proclaimed to be the innocent victim of a corrupt prosecution.

Congress passed a spending bill in 2022 that required the installation of a Jan. 6 commemorative plaque honoring the police officers who defended the Capitol. The plaque was supposed to be installed on the West Front of the Capitol, where the worst violence took place. It has been created, but it has yet to be put up, because congressional Republicans don’t want to honor, or even remember, those who defended them from a violent mob.

The plaque bears this inscription: “On behalf of a grateful Congress this plaque honors the extraordinary individuals who bravely protected and defended this symbol of democracy on January 6, 2021. Their heroism will never be forgotten.”

Trump and the Republicans are doing everything they can to make sure that, in fact, their heroism is forgotten.

Gregory J. Wallance was a federal prosecutor in the Carter and Reagan administrations and a member of the ABSCAM prosecution team, which convicted a U.S. senator and six representatives of bribery. He is the author of “Into Siberia: George Kennan’s Epic Journey Through the Brutal, Frozen Heart of Russia.”

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