Long shot? Capitol rioters hold out hope for a Trump pardon

In what could be longest of legal longshots, several of those arrested for storming U.S. Capitol are holding out hope that President Donald Trump will use some of his last hours in office to grant rioters a full and complete pardon.

Longtime advisers to Trump are urging him against such a move but rioters contend ir argument is compelling: y went to Capitol to support Trump, and w that y are facing charges carrying up to 20 years in prison, it’s time for Trump to support m.

“I feel like I was basically following my president. I was following what we were called to do. He asked us to fly re. He asked us to be re. So I was doing what he asked us to do,” said Jenna Ryan, a Dallas-area real-estate nt who took a private jet to Jan. 6 rally and ensuing riot to disrupt certification of election of President-elect Joe Biden.

Ryan -- who prosecutors say posted a w-deleted video of herself marching to Capitol with words, “We are going to f---ing go in here. Life or death” -- told Dallas television station KTVT, “I think we all deserve a pardon. I’m facing a prison sentence. I think I do t deserve that.”

Perhaps most high-profile rioter, so-called “QAn Shaman” who broke into Senate chamber and posed at dais with a spear, wearing a horned fur hat and animal skins, is also pleading for a pardon.

Jacob Chansley’s lawyer told Associated Press that he reached out to White House chief of staff Mark Meadows about a possible pardon on behalf of Arizona man, ackwledging it might be a reach but that re’s thing to lose in seeking one.

If Chansley is t granted a pardon, attorney Albert Watkins said, it could offer added benefit of furr awakening his client to fact that his devotion to Trump has t been reciprocated, comparing it to being a jilted lover or even a member of a cult.

“ only thing that was missing at Capitol was president, our president, stirring up Kool-Aid with a big spoon,” Watkins said.

Dominic Pezzola, a Rochester, New York, man and far-right Proud Boys supporter who was seen in a video using a clear police shield to shatter a Capitol window, also explored seeking a pardon but his attorney said re was t eugh time to make it happen.

“To believe president is going to carte blanche issue se pardons is kind of a fantasy,” defense attorney Mike Scibetta told AP. “I think it would cast a shadow on his own impeachment defense.”

Trump, who has long reveled in suspense, was expected to spend his last full day in office issuing a flurry of pardons to as many as 100 people, two people briefed on plans told AP.

But if Harvard Law professor emeritus Alan Dershowitz has his say, more than 150 rioters arrested so far and thousands more suspected should t be among m.

Dershowitz, who represented Trump in his first impeachment last year, told AP he has t been approached by any of rioters about seeking a pardon but even if he had, “it would be wrong to pardon rioters who committed crimes.”

South Carolina Republican Sen. Lindsey Graham, who speaks often with Trump, was among confidantes urging president t to go re.

“I don’t care if you went re and spread flowers on floor, you breached security of Capitol, you interrupted a joint session of Congress, you tried to intimidate us all,” Graham said on Fox Sunday Morning Futures. “You should be prosecuted to fullest extent of law and to seek a pardon of se people would be wrong.

He warned that such a move “would destroy President Trump.”

t all of those charged in Jan. 6 riot are in market for a pardon. Victoria Bergeson of Groton, Connecticut, who faces charges of violating curfew and unlawful entry wants her case to “just go away” but sees accepting a pardon “as an admission that she kwingly did something wrong,” said her attorney Samuel Bogash.

“She does t want to do that due to a justifiable fear of how public would perceive it,” he said. “She is already being trolled online.”

ah Bookbinder, executive director of Citizens for Responsibility and Ethics in Washington, a watchdog group, said Trump’s use of his clemency powers has set up a “spoils system” for his allies and pardoning insurrectionists would just be a more extreme version.

“That this president might be willing, even to pardon those who rose up against United States," he said, “would be ultimate statement of his perversion of purpose behind pardons.”