An image from the U.S. Department of Justice’s sentencing memorandum shows West Chester, Pa., resident Gary Wickersham walking into the U.S. Capitol on Jan. 6, 2021. He was sentenced to three years of probation for parading, demonstrating or picketing illegally. (screenshot/U.S. Department of Justice)
On Jan. 6, 2021, Robert Sanford, a 27-year veteran of the Chester fire department, hurled a fire extinguisher into a line of police officers defending the U.S. Capitol, striking two in their heads.
Riley June Williams, a 22-year-old Harrisburg woman, entered the Capitol and “led an army up the stairs” into then-Speaker Nancy Pelosi’s office suite, where, Williams later bragged on social media, she stole Pelosi’s laptop and gavel, according to court documents.
Robert Morss, of Glenshaw, went to the Capitol wearing body armor and joined a mob that used stolen riot shields to force police to retreat into a tunnel, court documents say, where Morss entered the building through a broken window.
Sanford, Williams and Morss are among at least 110 people from Pennsylvania who were charged with crimes related to the Jan. 6 attack on the Capitol fomented by President Donald Trump and acolytes in the right wing media claiming that the 2020 election was stolen.
Behind Texas and Florida, Pennsylvania has the third largest number of residents charged in connection with the attempt to thwart the peaceful transfer of power to President Joe Biden.
On Jan. 20, hours after his inauguration, Trump made good on a campaign promise to free those imprisoned for the Jan. 6 attack, issuing “a full, complete and unconditional pardon” to more than 1,500 people convicted or charged with offenses related to the Jan. 6 attack.
He also commuted sentences but did not pardon 14 people, including Zach Rehl, the leader of a Philadelphia far-right Proud Boys chapter. Rehl was convicted with Proud Boys national chairman Enrique Tarrio and three others of seditious conspiracy, a charge rarely used since the Civil War, and sentenced to 15 years in prison.
Gary Wickersham, who was 81 at the time of the Capitol attack, told the Capital-Star he thinks Trump’s pardons are “great” and that he has no regrets about his actions on Jan. 6.
Wickersham said he took a free bus that departed near his Chester County home to Washington, D.C. to hear Trump speak on Jan. 6. He ended up following the crowd to the Capitol.
When he reached the building, Wickersham, who was an Army paratrooper, said he climbed up the inside of the scaffolding where President Joe Biden was to be sworn in weeks later and walked through an open door.
Although he admitted that he entered the building illegally when he pleaded guilty, he maintained in a telephone interview Friday that police initiated the violence. According to court documents, he told FBI agents who visited his West Chester home in 2021, that he was justified in entering the Capitol because he was a taxpayer and that “the whole thing was a setup by antifa.”
Wickersham was sentenced to four months of home confinement and three years of probation for parading, demonstrating or picketing in a Capitol building, but said he has no remorse about his actions. Wickersham said he avoided prison in part because of his age and concern that he would be vulnerable COVID.
“It’s almost something I brag about,” Wickersham said, noting that he wasn’t even required to wear a monitoring device.
Wickersham was less braggadocious before sentencing Judge Royce Lamberth in 2021.
“It’s not like me to do that,” Wickersham said, according to The Philadelphia Inquirer. “In my whole 81 years, that 22 minutes I spent in there, it was a dark blot … I regret doing it. I shouldn’t have been in there.”
Others have expressed remorse and attribute their actions to lapses in judgment or indoctrination.
Andrew and Matthew Valentin are brothers from Stroudsburg, Monroe County, who were the last Jan. 6 defendants to be sentenced and are believed to be the first to be released, according to Matthew Valentin’s attorney Joshua Karoly.
They pleaded guilty in September to felony assault charges for joining a crowd that pushed metal barriers into a line of police.
Karoly said in a statement that both have taken full responsibility for their actions and blame no one else. Neither injured anyone, nor did they enter he Capitol or damage any government property.
“Each brother has apologized profusely and sincerely for their regrettable conduct on Jan. 6 at the Capitol. Both have lived law-abiding lives up to the moment of their lapse in judgment on that day,” Karoly said.
According to his attorney’s sentencing memo, Sanford, the firefighter who was sentenced to 52 months in prison for throwing a fire extinguisher at police, worked with a therapist who specializes in “cult deprogramming” to confront “the facts about the ‘stolen election’ conspiracy theory among others and how psychological manipulation is used to indoctrinate the followers of a conspiracy.”
Seth Weber, a former federal prosecutor who teaches law at DeSales University near Bethlehem, said the U.S. Constitution grants the president the power of executive pardon without limitations, exceptions or exclusions.
“It doesn’t need to be justified,” said Weber, who served as an assistant U.S. attorney in Philadelphia for 26 years. “It needs to be done by the president for whatever reason he wants.”
President Joe Biden also pardoned about 70 people during his term including his son Hunter Biden, who was awaiting sentencing on felony gun charges.
A pardon forgives a person for any legal consequences of a conviction, and while it may infuriate those who disagree with the decision, it doesn’t erase the conviction or the facts of the crime, Weber said.
“You are exonerated, you are held not responsible but your conviction is still on your record,” he said.
Pardons for those who engage in acts of rebellion or treason are far from unprecedented, said Bruce Antkowiak, a former federal prosecutor and professor at St. Vincent College in Latrobe, Pa.
President George Washington issued pardons for two Pennsylvania men, John Mitchell and Philip Weigel, convicted of treason as ringleaders of the Whiskey Rebellion against a tax on distilled spirits. And President Andrew Johnson issued a blanket pardon for thousands of Confederate soldiers and other officials, though high ranking officers had to apply for amnesty.
“There were certainly feelings among a great many of people that the South needs to be punished,” Antkowiak said. “There were also feelings that the war is over, there needs to be rebuilding, not continued animosity.”
Trump’s grant of executive clemency covers a range of Jan. 6 convicts, including those who pleaded guilty to merely entering the Capitol illegally to those found guilty by a jury of assaulting police officers. It drew criticism from some for failing to make a distinction. Even Vice President J.D. Vance said earlier this month that only those who “protested peacefully” should be pardoned,
“If you committed violence on that day, obviously you shouldn’t be pardoned,” Vance said, adding that there was “a bit of a gray area” in some cases.
“As someone who believes that we need to treat our law enforcement with the dignity and respect that they deserve, the idea that you would pardon someone who’s been convicted of a crime for assaulting a police officer, that doesn’t sit right with me,” Gov. Josh Shapiro said Tuesday. “I don’t think it sits right with a lot of Americans.”
Pennsylvania U.S. Sen. John Fetterman, who was among the first Democrats to meet one-on-one with Trump, said he disagreed with a lot of the pardons, just as he disagreed with some issued by Biden before leaving office.
“Some people are very deserving of a second chance and get a pardon, and there’s some that I don’t agree,” Fetterman said in an ABC news interview.
U.S. Rep. Dan Meuser (R-9th District) told CNN on Wednesday that while the attacks on police officers were unforgivable, those who were convicted have served their time.
“There’s no question anybody who assaults a police officer … is a disgrace … But let’s face it, those who did that have been in jail now for three to four years” Meuser said, adding that their sentences have been comparable to those of others convicted of assaulting police officers.
While executive clemency is a powerful tool, it comes at a cost, Antkowiak said.
“Presidents understand the price they pay for using the pardon power … it gives their opponents ammunition. That’s undoubtedly why most presidents wait until the end of their administrations,” Antkowiak said, noting that Biden was aware that his decision to pardon his son would generate backlash.
“The limit on pardon power is political,” Antkowiak said. “You can’t challenge it.”