The trials of the Capitol assaulters

[Derec]

From the wiki article I cited earlier:

On January 19, 2025, Peltier's sentence was commuted to indefinite house arrest by President Joe Biden shortly before he left office. He is scheduled to be released from prison on February 18, 2025.

"Is scheduled", not "was scheduled". He is now, due to the presidential commutation, scheduled to be released from prison on 2/18. He wasn't before. He was up for parole last year, but parole was denied, which means that he had no release date.
Maybe this article will provide clarity:
Biden commutes sentence for Indigenous activist Leonard Peltier, convicted in killing of FBI agents

Peltier’s tribe, the Turtle Mountain Band of Chippewa, has a home ready for him on the Turtle Mountain Indian Reservation in Belcourt, North Dakota, his son said.
Bureau of Prisons spokesperson Emery Nelson said Peltier remained incarcerated Monday at USP Coleman, a high-security prison in Florida. Peltier’s lawyer said his release date was tentatively set for Feb. 18.

Btw:

But law enforcement officers, former FBI agents, their families and prosecutors strongly opposed a pardon or any reduction in Peltier’s sentence. Democratic Presidents Bill Clinton and Barack Obama also rejected Peltier’s clemency requests. He was denied parole in 1993, 2009 and 2024.
Mike Clark, with the Society of Former Agents of the FBI, condemned the commutation as a “cowardly act” as Biden was leaving the White House. The FBI Agents Association joined Clark in expressing outrage.
“To the two agents’ families, it’s just going to be devastating to them. And the guy’s a remorseless killer. And now he’s going home,” Clark said. “The two agents didn’t have a chance to go home.”

It is most definitely a cowardly act. It further tarnishes Biden's legacy.

So if the wiki article has the facts straight, the commutation will keep Peltier confined indefinitely rather than having him go free in another month.
People who want to keep Peltier locked up should be thanking Biden for securing that outcome.

The wiki article is correct, as far as I can tell. The issue is of Ziperian interpretation of the article. Peltier wasn't scheduled for release, since his parole was denied, until the commutation by Biden.

Yeah but you're missing the point - that's exactly the same as providing 1,500 pardons to domestic terrorists 48 month after the act

The 1,500 so-called "terrorists" were mostly guilty of trespassing, or did things like dragging a lectern or putting their feet up on Nancy Pelosi's desk. Others attacked police officers, and I agree that they should have stayed in prison (not defending Trump's action here).
However, that is not in any way same as somebody who murdered two FBI officers in cold blood and was likely involved in the murder of a woman to whom he confessed that murder.
By the way, as to putting his feet up on Nancy Pelosi's desk, I am surprised the Left is not demanding the death penalty for that lèse-majesté

 

[Derec]

The thread is not about moral high ground or your need to whine about Democrats, so it is an irrelevant whataboutism because it has nothing to do with the insurrectionists.

Other presidential clemencies are very much relevant to the discussion of Trump's. Trump does not exist in a vacuum, he can and should be compared to other presidents, such as Biden.

And, of course, it is just a coincidence your whataboutisms are nonwhite criminals.

Susan Rosenberg (the one who actually bombed the Senate, and did not just put her feet up) was white.

But race did matter in the pressure Biden received from the Left to release the murderer. If Peltier was white, there would not be such pressure.

 

[Arctish]

So if the wiki article has the facts straight, the commutation will keep Peltier confined indefinitely rather than having him go free in another month.
People who want to keep Peltier locked up should be thanking Biden for securing that outcome.

The wiki article is correct, as far as I can tell. The issue is of Ziperian interpretation of the article. Peltier wasn't scheduled for release, since his parole was denied, until the commutation by Biden.

Does the commutation eliminate the possibility of parole, or will he get another parole hearing as scheduled next year? If there won't be any more parole hearings then the "indefinite house arrest" can mean confinement for the rest of his life.

Yeah but you're missing the point - that's exactly the same as providing 1,500 pardons to domestic terrorists 48 month after the act

The 1,500 so-called "terrorists" were mostly guilty of trespassing, or did things like dragging a lectern or putting their feet up on Nancy Pelosi's desk. Others attacked police officers, and I agree that they should have stayed in prison (not defending Trump's action here).
However, that is not in any way same as somebody who murdered two FBI officers in cold blood and was likely involved in the murder of a woman to whom he confessed that murder.

As far as I can see, no one except you is equating rioting and insurrection with double homicide of federal agents.

By the way, as to putting his feet up on Nancy Pelosi's desk, I am surprised the Left is not demanding the death penalty for that lèse-majesté

Who or what is this "Left" that would demand the death penalty for putting one's feet up on furniture?

Barbara Bush was very much on the Right, and anyway, she's dead.

 

[barbos]

Yeah but you're missing the point - that's exactly the same as providing 1,500 pardons to domestic terrorists 48 month after the act

They are not terrorists they are peaceful maidaners
Just ask Nuland, she knows.

 

[Patooka]

As far as I can see, no one except you is equating rioting and insurrection with double homicide of federal agents.

This. 100% this.

 

[Don2 (Don1 Revised)]

The guy with his feet up on Pelosi's desk was looking for Pelosi so he could murder her, torture her, or terrorize her, something really bad anyway in order to effect political change such as stop the legitimate President from eventually taking office. The only reason his actions were minimized is because police were able to slow down the progression of violent, brainwashed minions enough that they could hide government officials from them. And those police suffered in the process.

 

[Jimmy Higgins]

An 80 year old freed to house arrest until February 18th when he was going to be released from prison anyway.
Spare me your misinformed comparison.

You are the misinformed one. He was not going to be released from prison anyway. His next parole hearing wasn't until 2026.

From the wiki article I cited earlier:

On January 19, 2025, Peltier's sentence was commuted to indefinite house arrest by President Joe Biden shortly before he left office. He is scheduled to be released from prison on February 18, 2025.

So if the wiki article has the facts straight, the commutation will keep Peltier confined indefinitely rather than having him go free in another month.

People who want to keep Peltier locked up should be thanking Biden for securing that outcome.

Yeah but you're missing the point - that's exactly the same as providing 1,500 pardons to domestic terrorists 48 month after the act

I wanted to make clear that it isn't 50 years since the killings, but that he has been jail that long. Meanwhile the seditionist assholes (the ones with the big charges) are strolling out, chests puffed proudly. Ready to act again.

 

[Don2 (Don1 Revised)]

Meanwhile the seditionist assholes (the ones with the big charges) are strolling out, chests puffed proudly. Ready to act again.

I think "ready to act again" is an understatement. Is it maybe "ready to be ordered to act again?" or "standing back and standing by?" There are certainly different dimensions here in the pardon with trying desperately to compare to Biden's last-minute constitutionally motivated pardons. In Trump's case, he's pardoning his private army, but also sending a signal, intended or not, that other violent followers can be pardoned in the future and that signal goes to Trump's enemies and his cowardly allies who constantly call him "sir."

 

[Jimmy Higgins]

Meanwhile the seditionist assholes (the ones with the big charges) are strolling out, chests puffed proudly. Ready to act again.

I think "ready to act again" is an understatement. Is it maybe "ready to be ordered to act again?" or "standing back and standing by?" There are certainly different dimensions here in the pardon with trying desperately to compare to Biden's last-minute constitutionally motivated pardons. In Trump's case, he's pardoning his private army, but also sending a signal, intended or not, that other violent followers can be pardoned in the future and that signal goes to Trump's enemies and his cowardly allies who constantly call him "sir."

Indeed. Biden's pardoning of the judge who got paid to put minors in jail was awful. It is indefensible. There are usually a number of others that are a bit controversial, and they are usually some of the last things done in a presidency. Trump did this the first day. I suppose we should feel lucky he couldn't get anyone to draft pardons near the end of his last term.

But bringing up an 80 year old guy who served nearly five decades in prison (who is going into house arrest) with the rioters who rioted for the guy who pardoned them in an attempt to overthrow an election... it just shows absolutely no sense of perspective.

 

[southernhybrid]

Last night I read quite a bit about the life of Peltier and I've decided that anyone with an ounce of compassion would agree that he has served far more than necessary. When he was a boy, he was taken away from his tribe, and forced to attend a white school, in an attempt to force him to give up his Native American Culture.

As a young adult, he became an activist to work against the brutality that many Native American were facing from the police. He didn't have a fair trial as a lot of evidence wasn't permitted to be shown. While he did admit guilt, I'm sure well informed Americans know that sometimes people are treated in ways that lead them to exhaustion and they admit guilt to crimes they never committed. While he was a part of the group that murdered the agents, he later stated that he wasn't the one who killed them. Besides all of that, 50 years is more than long enough of a sentence in a situation like his. He is 80 years old and I've read he is in poor health. He was first up for parole in 1993 and then at least two times more. His next parole hearing isn't until 2026. Home confinement is a type of prison, although not as horrible as being in one of America's disgusting, often brutally inhumane prisons. So, regardless of how I might sometimes feel about our constitution permitting presidential pardons, I think commuting the prison sentence of Peltier was the right thing to do. In fact, I think it should have been done years ago, all things considered.

Giving total pardons to those who physically attacked police, while expressing a goal of killing the VP and the Speaker of the House, who were simply trying to do their job by protecting the capital and the people inside, can't be equated with allowing a man who was the victim of so many things done by our government, and who had already spent 50 years incarcerated, to spend what will likely be the rest of his life confined to home, can not be equated. The first was an unjust act, and the second was an act of compassion. And, these so called violent militias are now permitted to get some "mothafuckin" guns. Just what do you think they might have in mind?

 

[TV and credit cards]

But one rioter, 71-year-old Boise resident Pamela Hemphill, once nicknamed “the MAGA Granny,” rejected her pardon.

“I got my critical thinking back and started doing my own research, which I’m guilty of not doing back then because they gaslight you so much,” Hemphill said. “It’s really weird when you come out of a cult. It’s like you look back and you go, what was I thinking?”

 

[GenesisNemesis]

But one rioter, 71-year-old Boise resident Pamela Hemphill, once nicknamed “the MAGA Granny,” rejected her pardon.

“I got my critical thinking back and started doing my own research, which I’m guilty of not doing back then because they gaslight you so much,” Hemphill said. “It’s really weird when you come out of a cult. It’s like you look back and you go, what was I thinking?”

But will the Trump cultists on this forum ever learn?

 

[Shadowy Man]

Now that the hostages have been freed, I am hoping to pay less for eggs.

 

[Jimmy Higgins]

link

The people who are fine with this are always fine with police use of violence. It is a shame they didn't cut these people down.

Among those individuals are Justin Jersey, 34, of Flint, who was sentenced in September 2022 to more than four years in prison for knocking a police officer to the ground and then using his baton to hit another officer; Logan Barnhart, 44, of Lansing, who pleaded guilty to dragging an officer down the Capitol steps and later striking at officers with part of a flagpole; Matthew Krol, 66, of Linden, who was sentenced to more than four years after pleading guilty to wresting a baton from a law enforcement officer and hitting another with it; and Michael Foy, 33, of Wixom, sentenced in early 2024 to serve more than three years in prison for using a hockey stick to attack police officers, including one which had already fallen to the ground.

I don't think anyone would mistake a commuting of sentence for Peltier or anyone in Weather Underground to be an endorsement of the violence committed several decades ago (heck, I would expect most people under the age of 40 would think Weather Underground was a weather website). Unlike this very broad set of pardons, which sends a chilling message.

 

[Elixir]

Is it open season on cop-beaters yet?

 

[laughing dog]

U

The thread is not about moral high ground or your need to whine about Democrats, so it is an irrelevant whataboutism because it has nothing to do with the insurrectionists.

Other presidential clemencies are very much relevant to the discussion of Trump's. Trump does not exist in a vacuum, he can and should be compared to other presidents, such as Biden.

The thread is about the capitol assaulters, not moral high ground or the ethics of Presidential pardons. Comparisons to other commutations and pardons are not relevant. And, of course, it is interesting that you only bring up pardons and commutations by Democrats.

And, of course, it is just a coincidence your whataboutisms are nonwhite criminals.

Susan Rosenberg (the one who actually bombed the Senate, and did not just put her feet up) was white.

You did not lead with that one, but once again, you come up with someone who is a not a white male. Are you really that self unaware?

But race did matter in the pressure Biden received from the Left to release the murderer. If Peltier was white, there would not be such pressure.

Your suspicions about motivations based on race reflect on your obsession about race, not reality.

 

[Jimmy Higgins]

Meanwhile...

Jacob Chansley, the so-called “QAnon Shaman” whose headdress of horns and makeup made him one of the more prominent faces of the Capitol riot, declared he was going to purchase firearms after being pardoned by President Donald Trump.

“I JUST GOT THE NEWS FROM MY LAWYER... I GOT A PARDON BABY!” he wrote on X Monday. “THANK YOU PRESIDENT TRUMP!!! NOW I AM GONNA BUY SOME MOTHA FU*KIN GUNS!!! I LOVE THIS COUNTRY!!! GOD BLESS AMERICA!!!!”

“J6ers are getting released & JUSTICE HAS COME... EVERYTHING done in the dark WILL come to light!” he added.

For those who don't recall the person... it was this guy. And he is sounding like a person that leaves behind a manifesto.

 

[Elixir]

Is it legal to hunt them down like animals?

 

[TomC]

Is it legal to hunt them down like animals?

Honestly, I would prefer more due process (although I wouldn't get upset).

The part that keeps stunning me is people like @Derec referring to the violent insurrectionists who tried to overthrow the USA government as "trespassers". In most places for most of history they wouldn't have gotten off the Capitol steps alive. I'm too big on my Prolifer beliefs to be a big supporter of capital punishment, but I'd have been okay with under those circumstances.
Tom

 

[ZiprHead]

Is it legal to hunt them down like animals?

No, but I wonder when someone is going to list their names and addresses along with the charges they just got pardoned for.