One of the orchestrators of the January 6 riots has returned to Capitol Hill after being freed by Donald Trump’s sweeping grants of clemency.
Stewart Rhodes, leader of the Oath Keepers militia, met with House lawmakers on Wednesday afternoon just days after being pardoned by the president.
Members of his group were pivotal in the insurrection and could be seen advancing on the Capitol in military stack formation on January 6.
Mr Rhodes was handed an 18-year jail term for seditious conspiracy but walked free this week when Mr Trump pardoned more than 1,500 people charged with federal crimes at the Capitol.
Mr Trump’s action shutters the largest investigation in US Justice Department history, including more than 300 pending cases.
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His clemency extended from the people who committed only misdemeanours such as trespassing to groups who planned the assault on democracy.
Redemption, but also vindication
Rhodes, a former US Army paratrooper and Yale-educated lawyer, was convicted in one of the most serious cases brought by the Justice Department over the riot that left more than 100 police officers injured.
“It’s redemption, but also vindication,” Rhodes told reporters outside the Washington DC jail yesterday, where a crowd of Mr Trump’s supporters waited for more prisoners to be released.
Rhodes, who did not enter the Capitol on January 6, said he did not have any regrets and still believed Mr Trump’s claims that the election was stolen.
The US president said the pardons will end “a grave national injustice that has been perpetrated upon the American people over the last four years” and begin “a process of national reconciliation”.
More than 1,200 people across the US have been convicted of crimes at the Capitol, including roughly 200 people who pleaded guilty to assaulting law enforcement.
More than a dozen defendants were convicted of seditious conspiracy, a rare Civil War-era charge and the most serious one brought in the Jan 6 attack.