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Trump commutes sentences of Jan. 6 rioters, including WA Proud Boy Ethan Nordean

By Lauren Girgis, The Seattle Times
Published: January 21, 2025, 7:01am

SEATTLE — President Donald Trump, who was sworn in Monday, signed a sweeping pardon and clemency for rioters criminally charged in the Jan. 6, 2021 attack on the U.S. Capitol moments after he stepped into the Oval Office to begin his second term.

Ethan Nordean, an Auburn man and prominent member of the Proud Boys far-right group who led a pro-Trump mob to the Capitol, was among the 14 whose sentencing was commuted.

Nordean was sentenced to 18 years in federal prison for seditious conspiracy and other federal crimes committed that day — among the longest handed to any of the hundreds of prosecuted Jan. 6 defendants.

It was not immediately clear whether Nordean would be released Monday evening from a federal lockup in Florida. His attorney did not respond to a request for comment.

Trump said his order grants pardons for 1,500 people criminally charged in the Capitol attack, fulfilling his promise to release supporters who tried to help him overturn his election defeat four years ago. Among those prosecuted are about 30 people who live or lived in Washington at the time.

“These are the hostages,” he said while signing the paperwork in the Oval Office.

Trump’s pardons come weeks after his own Jan. 6 case was dismissed because of the Justice Department’s policy against prosecuting sitting presidents.

Presidents have the power to commute sentences of people convicted of federal crimes, which could reduce or eliminate a prison sentence. Unlike a pardon, a commutation does not forgive the crime nor does it restore the recipient’s civil rights.

Nordean, 34, was known in his right-wing circles as “Rufio Panman.” A prosecutor called Nordean the “undisputed leader on the ground on Jan. 6” during his sentencing in 2023.

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The Department of Justice said Nordean and others, using two-way radios and plans made beforehand, “directed and mobilized” their followers to dismantle metal barricades meant to protect the Capitol, and led the crowd to assault law enforcement officers.

Calling themselves a “pro-Western fraternal organization for men who refuse to apologize for creating the modern world; aka Western Chauvinists,” the Proud Boys have been condemned as a hate group by extremist watchdogs.

Trump repeatedly promised during his yearslong campaign to pardon some convicted of crimes associated with the Jan. 6 attack. In December, Trump told Time magazine he would pardon most of the rioters accused or convicted of storming the Capitol to block the certification of Biden’s victory soon after his inauguration. “It’s going to start in the first hour,” he says. “Maybe the first nine minutes.”

Trump also ordered the Justice Department Monday to shut down hundreds of pending Jan. 6 prosecutions, including many for violent crimes.

The attack by Trump supporters spawned one of the most wide-ranging criminal investigations in U.S. history.

The attack by the mob that day temporarily interrupted Congress’ certification of the 2020 presidential election and resulted in the deaths of four people in the crowd. Four police officers also died by suicide in the days and months after the riot and another died from a stroke the day after Jan. 6 after being pepper-sprayed.

Monday evening, Sen. Patty Murray condemned Trump’s action, calling it a “sad day for America.”

“What the President is doing is wrong — I’m going to keep speaking the truth and fighting for our democracy,” Murray said in the statement. “I will never let President Trump paper over the history and reality of that dark day or the lessons we must learn from it.”

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