On Monday, Stewart Rhodes, the eye-patched founder of the far-right militia known as the Oath Keepers, was in prison, which is where he has been since he was convicted of seditious conspiracy for his role in the January 6 attack on the U.S. Capitol. By Tuesday afternoon, he was taking a nap at my neighbors’ house.

I learned this when I recently walked past that house, which I’ve gotten to know well. A couple of years ago, my partner and I discovered that it was a kind of refuge for January 6ers. The mother of Ashli Babbitt, who was shot and killed during the riot, lives there, along with Nicole Reffitt, the wife of a Texas man who brought a gun to the Capitol grounds. Occasionally a young January 6 defendant named Brandon Fellows stays at the house too. We got used to seeing them around the neighborhood, which, like most of Washington, D.C., is heavily Democratic. Before the election, the house was decorated with Christmas lights and the lawn with Trump signs, and no one complained. But on day one of Donald Trump’s new presidency, something came loose.

Strangers in MAGA hats and scarves started showing up with suitcases. Someone egged the house, twice. Fellows’s motorcycle was stolen. Although it was freezing on Tuesday, lots of people were on the porch, people I didn’t recognize. I spotted Fellows outside, wearing an Immigration and Customs Enforcement jacket, his version of a sartorial troll. “We were at breakfast with Stewart,” he said. “He’s taking a nap real quick.”

[Listen: Even some J6ers don’t agree with Trump’s blanket pardon]

Rhodes is among the most infamous J6ers for a reason. For years, he recruited and cultivated a militant group to resist government tyranny. His estranged ex-wife recently said she fears that she and some of her kids are on his “kill list” (lawyers for Rhodes denied this). In 2023, he was sentenced to 18 years for plotting to thwart the peaceful transfer of power on January 6.

When I ran into Fellows, Rhodes had just been released from prison, after Trump had pardoned more than 1,500 January 6 defendants in his first hours back in office. Trump had repeatedly promised that the pardons were coming, but the fact that he included those charged with the most serious crimes came as a surprise. In effect, he chose not to distinguish between the mildly and the severely dangerous—people who demonstrated terrible judgment on one day, getting swept up in a mob, versus those who had planned to carry out violence, for example. (Rhodes, however, was one of 14 of individuals granted a commutation, meaning his sentence was erased, but he did not have all his rights restored.)

In the past year, I spoke with many January 6ers and their families as my partner, Lauren Ober, and I made a podcast about our neighbors’ house. I know how their lives have been upended by the prosecutions, and so I understand that, for many of them, day one was some kind of setting things right. Many of them absorbed Trump’s framing: They thought of their loved ones as actual hostages, held by the government. “Today, we are a free country,” I heard one tearful father of a January 6er say outside the D.C. jail on Monday night as he waited for his son to be released.

In an instant, thousands of families were living a day they’d feared would never come. But in Donald Trump’s America, one person’s order restored is another person’s lawless abandon.

In our podcast, my partner and I followed the story of Marie Johnatakis, whose husband, Taylor, had been serving a seven-year sentence in a federal prison in Springfield, Missouri. Three weeks ago, when her world was still in chaos, Marie bought a one-way ticket home for Taylor, back to Seattle. Her daughter kept cautioning her that politicians don’t keep their promises—that Trump wouldn’t follow through on the pardons he campaigned on—but Marie is an optimist. On Tuesday night, she sent me a picture of her and Taylor an hour after she had picked him up from prison. They sat side by side, smiling, like in a Christmas-card photo. I asked her if it would be hard to adjust to him being home but she said no; it would be seamless. Taylor has written each of their five children one letter a week from prison, and read them books over the phone. Family harmony will be restored, Marie believes, and so will the rightness of all things.

“I mean, this started with January 6, four years ago, and we were the scum of the Earth. We were ‘domestic terrorists.’ We were, you know, like, we were people that you were supposed to be afraid of. And then the January 6 committee and all of that, and every time Trump had anything with criminal charges,” she told me. “He’s not a savior,” she said of Trump. “But for a lot of us, this is a miracle. A lot of us feel like it was one miracle after another.”

[Read: Republican leaders once thought January 6 was ‘tragic’]

Before taking office for a second time, Trump sometimes said he would pardon defendants on a case-by-case basis. I spoke with Republican lawyers who mentioned the idea of a review board, a Justice Department committee that might evaluate cases such as Taylor’s. His was a middling case; he was not among the several hundred people convicted solely of misdemeanors, such as trespassing and disorderly conduct, but nor was he among the small group convicted of seditious conspiracy. His charges involved using a megaphone to yell “One, two, three, go!” and lead a crowd to push a barricade into a row of police officers. In an alternative version of reality in which Trump had smashed history with slightly more finesse, lawyers might have debated in a room about which degrees of “assault” qualified which people for pardons, and you can imagine how Taylor might have won his freedom. But instead Trump chose a blanket pardon. Now the QAnon Shaman is posting about how excited he is to “BUY SOME MOTHA FU*KIN GUNS!!!”

When I walked by my neighbors’ house on Tuesday afternoon, Nicole Reffitt, the wife of the man who was sentenced for bringing a gun to the Capitol, was outside too, being interviewed by a Dutch news crew. Her husband, Guy, was about to get out of jail, and the family would move back to Texas. But unlike Marie Johnatakis, Nicole seemed unsettled. Not all January 6ers are happy about the pardons. One woman, known as “MAGA Granny,” has said she doesn’t deserve a pardon and plans to complete her probation.

Nicole can think of a few defendants she believes don’t deserve one. “ I’m a law-and-order gal, really,” she told me. “And so not all charges should be gone there. People did really bad things that day.” In many people’s minds, her husband was one of them, even though he didn’t enter the Capitol or use his gun. She told me she was thinking of someone like Jacob Lang, who was captured on video swinging a baseball bat at police officers and thrusting a riot shield in their direction, according to an affidavit. At that moment, Lang, whose case never went to trial, was at the D.C. jail still waiting for his release, growing impatient. “These tyrannical animals will not stop and we need President Trump to get these men released ASAP!!!!!” someone posted on Monday from Lang’s X account. He was released Tuesday night.

Outside the D.C. jail on Monday and Tuesday, the former inmates were not quite running the asylum, but they were enchanting the crowd outside. So far, the 22 January 6ers held at the D.C. jail have been released slowly, a handful each day, but it has become a gathering place for the recently released from all over the country. On Tuesday night, Robert Morss, known as “Lego Man” because authorities found a Lego replica of the Capitol at his house, was a crowd favorite. Camera crews from Sweden, Japan, and Norway broadcast from outside the jail. Whenever Bob Marley’s “Redemption Song” came on the speakers, the crowd belted it out.

On Tuesday night, I caught a glimpse of Rhodes at the edge of the crowd, giving an interview to a right-wing YouTuber. “It’s a day of celebration,” he said. “When President Trump was inaugurated, it was awesome. You know, like he said himself, God saved him to save America, and I believe that’s true. And then he turned around and saved us last night.” Rhodes’s only complaint was that he’d been given a commutation; he told the interviewer he was applying for a pardon. “ I think everyone deserves a pardon, without any, without any exception,” he said. “It’s impossible to get a fair trial here if you’re a Trump supporter … So if you have no chance of a fair trial, then you should be presumed innocent. That’s put back in your natural state, which is an innocent and free human being.” (Rhodes declined to talk with me.)

That’s the view of January 6 that follows naturally from the pardons: They were sham trials. It was actually a day of peace. Trump and his allies are likely to push this revised version of history for the next four years. House Speaker Mike Johnson has already announced that he will form a select subcommittee on January 6, “to continue our efforts to uncover the full truth that is owed to the American people.”

[Read: Trump’s pardons are sending a crystal-clear message]

Here is the truth. Prosecuting January 6ers did not require delicate forensics. Tens of thousands of hours of video show rioters beating up police with whatever tools are at hand. Five people died during the insurrection and in its immediate aftermath, and four police officers later died by suicide. Some 140 officers were assaulted, and many could never work again. This week, a retired officer, Michael Fanone, told Rhodes to go fuck himself live on CNN, and said he was worried for his safety and that of his family. Fanone is surely not alone. I think of the hundreds of D.C. citizens who served as jurors in January 6 cases that are now overturned, and the judges who presided over them.

When he sentenced Taylor Johnatakis, Judge Royce Lamberth wrote: “Political violence rots republics. Therefore, January 6 must not become a precedent for further violence against political opponents or governmental institutions.” Lamberth, who is 81 and whose wife died a few months ago, had a couple of new January 6 cases due to start this week, a father and son, but they have disappeared from the docket. In his sentencing letter for Johnatakis’s case, he wrote, “This is not normal.” I wanted to ask him about the pardons but did not get a response from his office.

In our conversation, Marie Johnatakis referred to Lamberth as one of the “sweet judges,” and she meant it earnestly. I’ve known her for more than a year, and she is a gentle person. But her critique of him, although kindly delivered, is a radical one. She compared Lamberth to Javert, the prosecutor in Les Miserables. In her view, the judge is so rigidly attached to the law that he can’t see the deeper truth, which is that a good man like her husband should not have gone to jail.

She and Taylor fly home today. The kids, she told me, will be making them dinner.

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This week, House Republicans created a select subcommittee to investigate the January 6, 2021, attack on the Capitol and uncover the “full truth that is owed to the American people,” Speaker Mike Johnson said. Presumably this is a “truth” that somehow fell outside the frames of the thousands of videos taken that day that showed rioters storming the building and beating police officers with whatever weapons were at hand. Despite January 6 being an extraordinarily well-documented crime, many Republicans seem intent on whitewashing what many federal judges, jurors, and really any average American citizen can see with their own eyes.

In the past year, I’ve gotten to know many J6ers well. My partner, Lauren Ober, and I made the podcast We Live Here Now. The thing they had all been waiting for are the pardons that President Donald Trump delivered as promised “on day one.” Trump kept his promise. Hours after being sworn in, he gave clemency to more than 1,500 people convicted of involvement at the Capitol that day. Among them were some longtime militia leaders who carefully planned the riot. Now they’re free. For some, this is order restored; for so many other Americans, this is lawless abandon. And not everyone is reacting to the pardons the way you might expect.

The following is a transcript of the episode:

Marie Johnatakis: Hello?

Hanna Rosin: Hey, this is actually Hanna Rosin. I’m calling on my son’s phone for various reasons.

Johnatakis: Hanna! How are you?

Rosin: You sound happy.

Johnatakis: I am. I just got done bawling.

Rosin: Bawling. As in crying. Hard.

Johnatakis:  I think everything just came out. I was just holding it in for the last how many years?

Rosin: That was Marie Johnatakis, whose husband, Taylor, was just pardoned by President Donald Trump. He’d been sentenced to over seven years for what he did at the Capitol on January 6. Now he’s coming home.

This is Radio Atlantic. I’m Hanna Rosin.

A few hours into his second term, Trump pardoned more than 1,500 people charged in connection with the attack on the Capitol on January 6, 2021. Some had been charged with serious felonies, like assaulting police officers and seditious conspiracy. Others were charged with misdemeanors, like trespassing and disorderly conduct.

I’ve gotten to know a lot of January 6ers over the last couple of years, so I know how these prosecutions have upended their lives. And I know that for a lot of them, the pardons have restored their sense of justice. For them, this week feels like the world is set right again.

And as I checked in with them this week, and hung out outside the D.C. jail, mostly I just saw the chasm more clearly: how one person’s order restored is another person’s lawless abandon.

Johnatakis: I know this is going to sound crazy, but I have just really felt like Trump will do what he says he’s gonna do. And so, ever since that, I was like, “Well, if Taylor gets pardoned, it will be the first day.”

Rosin: Three weeks ago, when her world was still in chaos, Marie Johnatakis bought a one-way ticket home for Taylor. Trump had mentioned that he might pardon all the January 6ers, but you could never be sure. Politicians don’t usually do what they say, her daughter told her. And for a family whose only working parent had been in jail for more than a year, an airline ticket is a luxury.

But Marie had watched the video over and over of Trump telling an NBC reporter that he would pardon the J6ers on day one of taking office.

Donald Trump: We’re gonna look at everything. We’re gonna look at individual cases—

Kristen Welker: Everyone?

Trump: Yeah.

Welker: Okay.

Trump: But I’m going to be acting very quickly.

Welker: Within your first 100 days? First day?

Trump: First day.

Welker: First day?

Trump: Yeah. I’m looking first day.

Welker: You’ll issue these pardons.

Rosin: And then on day one, the world flipped.

Man: First we have a list of pardons and commutations relating to the events that occurred on January 6, 2021.

Trump: Okay. And how many people is this?

Man: I think this order will apply to approximately 1,500 people, sir.

Trump: So this is January 6. And these are the hostages, approximately 1,500 for a pardon. Full pardon.

Rosin: On Monday night, just before midnight, Marie finally picked Taylor up from prison, and she sent me a picture. They sat side by side, smiling, like a late Christmas-card photo. Marie hasn’t sat side by side with her husband since he was taken into custody just before Christmas 2023.

I asked her if she thought his transition home would be rocky, and she said no—it’llbe seamless. Taylor has written each of their five children a letter a week from prison, and he sometimes reads them books over the phone. In her mind, family harmony will be quickly restored, and so will the rightness of all things.

Johnatakis: I mean, this started with January 6, four years ago, and we were the scum of the Earth. We were domestic terrorists. We were people that you were supposed to be afraid of. Every time Trump had anything with criminal charges or anything like that, he has really been our hope for anything that would ever mean a pardon for us. And so a lot of us feel like it was one miracle after another.

And people don’t look to Trump—people in the movement on the chats that I’m on and stuff like that don’t look to him like a savior. But I think a lot of the people—almost everyone has faith, like a faith in God, a faith in Jesus. And I do hear a lot of like, for us, it’s a miracle.

Rosin: There is a whole other way that these pardons could have rolled out.

A little more than a week before inauguration, Vice President J. D. Vance made it clear to Fox News that he wasn’t expecting blanket pardons.

J. D. Vance: If you committed violence on that day, obviously you shouldn’t be pardoned. And there’s a little bit of a gray area there, but we’re very much committed to seeing the equal administration of law.

Rosin: During the transition, I spoke with Republican lawyers who imagined there might be some kind of review board, like maybe a Justice Department committee that would evaluate cases such as Taylor’s.

Taylor was not among the several hundred convicted solely of misdemeanors, such as trespassing or disorderly conduct. But also, he was not among the small handful convicted of seditious conspiracy. His assault charge hung on the fact that he was yelling into his bullhorn, urging a crowd to push a barricade into a row of cops. All captured on video.

Taylor Johnatakis: One foot! One, two, three, go!

Rosin: And under the J. D. Vance scenario, there would have been qualified lawyers debating in a room about degrees of “assault” and what length of sentence they merit. But instead, Trump chose to go with a blanket pardon, which sounds uncomplicated but actually brings maximum chaos.

Tuesday night, I was walking down my own street past a house that I know well. It’s a kind of safe house for January 6ers. Micki Witthoeft lives there. She’s the mother of Ashli Babbitt, who was killed at the Capitol that day. So does Nicole Reffitt, whose husband, Guy, was sentenced to over seven years for bringing a gun to the Capitol. Occasionally, a young January 6er named Brandon Fellows stays there too.

My partner, Lauren Ober, and I got to know the people in that house last year when we made an Atlantic podcast about it called We Live Here Now. I’ve walked by their house hundreds of times. But when I walked the dogs past the house on Tuesday in freezing weather, I saw Brandon outside, wearing an ICE jacket—as in Immigration and Customs Enforcement. This is his version of a sartorial troll.

Rosin: So what’s going on? I guess I don’t even know the basics of what’s going on.

Fellows: Last I heard was from Jen. We were at lunch with Stewart Rhodes—breakfast with Stewart Rhodes today.

Rosin: He’s here?

Fellows: Yes. But we’ve all been up, and he’s taking a nap real quick. So we just got back, but—

Rosin: Is he staying here?

Rosin: I froze—and not from the cold. Stewart Rhodes, the guy with the eye patch, who founded the Oathkeepers. He for years recruited and cultivated an armed militia to resist government tyranny. His estranged ex-wife recently said she fears that she and their kids are on his quote “kill list.” Rhodes’s attorneys have said that the idea that his family’s in danger is unfounded.

Before Trump’s commutation he was serving an 18-year sentence for seditious conspiracy, one of the longest of all the January 6ers. Now Stewart Rhodes was taking a nap down the block from my house.

[Music]

More on that after the break.

[Break]

Rosin: While Rhodes was napping in her house, Nicole Reffitt, was outside, being interviewed by a Dutch news crew. Her family is notorious, because her son, Jackson, turned in his father to the FBI. Someone adapted the trial transcript into an excellent play called Fatherland. Anyway, this week her husband, Guy, was about to get out of prison. But unlike Marie Johnatakis, she seemed unsettled about the pardons.

Rosin:  How do you guys feel about the blanket pardon?

Reffitt: You know, I was never a fan of that. I guess he thought it was the quickest way—pull the Band-Aid off. I was more in favor of commutations and then let’s look at everything, because not only did people do bad things that day, but there were some charges that were absolutely wielded like a weapon against people. And those things also need to be looked at because, you know, I don’t want anyone to have to go through this. And that’s my biggest concern.

Rosin: What do you mean “concern”? Like, I don’t know how to think about the blanket pardon either, Nicole. I’m trying to think what’s the difference between this and if it had gone a different way—what does it mean that it’s a blanket? Have you guys talked about that?

Reffitt: Well, because now all charges are gone.

Rosin: Yeah.

Reffitt: You know, and, uh, I’m a law-and-order gal, really. And so not all charges should be gone there. People did really bad things that day.

Rosin: In many people’s minds, Nicole’s husband, Guy, was one of the people who did really bad things that day, and he did get a fair sentence. Guy brought a gun to the Capitol, although he didn’t enter the building or use it.

Reffitt: Yeah, I never expected him not to have something, you know, like, I figured he’d be charged with something, because it was so significant, but it was just so over-the-top to me, all of the charges and that has always been my biggest issue.

[Crowd chanting]

Rosin: As of Wednesday only eight of the 22 people held at the D.C. jail had been released. But outside the jail had turned into a gathering place for people released from all over the country. Camera crews stood around from Sweden, Japan, Norway broadcasting interviews with the newly freed. And when Bob Marley’s “Redemption Song” came on the speakers, the crowd belted it out together.

[Sound of “Redemption Song” by Bob Marley]

Rosin: On Tuesday night, I caught a glimpse of Stewart Rhodes at the edge of the crowd. He’s hard to miss, with the eye patch. He was giving an interview to a right-wing YouTuber.

Stewart Rhodes: It’s a day of celebration. I mean, yesterday it was too. When President Trump was inaugurated, it was awesome. You know, like he said himself, you know, God saved him to save America, and I believe that’s true. And then he turned around and saved us last night, I mean, and restored us to our freedom. I mean, I’m not 100 percent restored yet. I’m still waiting for a pardon, but it’s so, so wonderful to be out, be out of these bars.

Rosin: That’s Rhodes’s one big complaint—that he’d been given a commutation instead of a pardon. A commutation can erase a sentence, but it does not restore all your rights, such as the right to buy guns. He told the interviewer he was applying for a pardon. He said, “ I think everyone deserves a pardon, without any exception.”

Rhodes: No one got a fair trial. It’s impossible to get a fair trial here if you’re a Trump supporter. And so you don’t have an unbiased jury, an impartial jury; you don’t have an impartial judge; you don’t have a jury that’s going to hold the government to its standard beyond reasonable doubt.

It’s not going to happen. So if you have no chance of a fair trial, then you should be presumed innocent. That’s put back in your natural state, which is an innocent and free human being.

Rosin: So that’s Rhodes’s version of history. They were sham trials. It was actually a day of peace. It’s a revision of history that Trump and his allies are likely to try to push and push for the next four years. House Speaker Mike Johnson has already formed a select subcommittee on January 6, to quote “continue our efforts to uncover the full truth that is owed to the American people”

But for a whole crew of other people involved in January 6, these pardons represent a reversal of justice.

January 6 did not require delicate forensics. It has to be one of the most well-documented crimes in modern history. There are tens of thousands of hours of video showing rioters beating up police with whatever tools are at hand.

At least five people died for reasons that are in some way related to the insurrection. Some 140 police officers were injured, and many could never work again. On Wednesday, retired officer Michael Fanone had choice words for Rhodes that he expressed live on CNN.

Michael Fanone: This is what I would say to Stewart Rhodes: Go f— yourself. You’re a liar.

Anchor: We didn’t obviously to beep that word out …

Rosin: Fanone said he’s worried for his safety and that of his family.

The judge who sentenced Taylor Johnatakis, Judge Royce Lamberth, wrote a letter in connection with the sentencing. He wrote: “Political violence rots republics. Therefore, January 6 must not become a precedent for further violence against political opponents or governmental institutions.” Lamberth is 81. His wife died a few months ago. He had a handful of new January 6 cases on his docket, but of course they’ve disappeared. In that sentencing letter, he continued, “This is not normal.”

We tried to reach him to talk about the pardons, by the way, but he wasn’t ready to talk about them yet.

 Reffitt: My husband’s being processed out of Oklahoma right now. Can’t wait to see that man. He will be here in D.C. tomorrow. And you know what? We’re getting freedom, baby! That’s right. We’re getting freedom! We are getting freedom. And that’s absolutely right.

Rosin: At the Tuesday-night rally, Nicole got a call from Guy. He was out. On the road. Headed towards the airport.

Reffitt: He’s in the car. He’s in a car! In a car!

Rosin: Stewart Rhodes told the crowd that he was headed back to California this week. As for Marie and Taylor, they fly home on Thursday. Marie told me the kids are gonna make dinner.

[Music]

Rosin: This episode of Radio Atlantic was produced by Jinae West and Kevin Townsend and edited by Claudine Ebeid. It was engineered by Rob Smierciak and fact-checked by Stef Hayes. Claudine Ebeid is the executive producer of Atlantic audio, and Andrea Valdez is our managing editor.

I’m Hanna Rosin. Thanks for listening.