Which pardons and commutations issued by Donald Trump were for participants in the January 6, 2021 Capitol attack, and where are those records published?
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Executive summary
On January 20, 2025, President Donald Trump issued a sweeping clemency proclamation that commuted the prison sentences of 14 named individuals tied to the Proud Boys and Oath Keepers and granted full, unconditional pardons to a much larger set of people convicted of or charged with offenses related to the January 6, 2021 Capitol attack; the proclamation and implementing materials were published by the White House and coordinated through the Department of Justice’s Office of the Pardon Attorney [1] [2]. Major news organizations and legal commentators subsequently reported the scope — roughly 1,500–1,600 people pardoned and the 14 commutations — and have catalogued names and follow-up actions in media lists and analyses [3] [4] [5].
1. What the official action said and where it’s posted
The central public record is the presidential proclamation titled “Granting Pardons And Commutation Of Sentences For Certain Offenses Relating To The Events At Or Near The United States Capitol On January 6, 2021,” posted on the White House website, which explicitly commuted the sentences of specified individuals and directed the Attorney General to issue certificates of pardon and to pursue dismissal of related pending indictments [1]. The Justice Department’s Office of the Pardon Attorney also published a companion page noting it was ready to issue certificates of pardon in accordance with the proclamation and explaining its administrative role in effectuating the clemency [2].
2. Who was commuted — the 14 named defendants
The proclamation’s text lists 14 people whose sentences were commuted to time served as of January 20, 2025; reporting repeatedly identifies these individuals as members or leaders of the Oath Keepers and Proud Boys and notes many had been convicted of seditious-conspiracy-related offenses — high-profile examples cited by outlets include Stewart Rhodes and other leaders tied to militia and extremist group prosecutions [1] [5] [6]. The BBC and Stanford Law reporting emphasize that these 14 commutations left convictions on the record even as those individuals were released from custody [5] [6].
3. Who received blanket pardons and the estimated scale
Beyond the 14 commutations, the proclamation ordered “a full, complete and unconditional pardon to all other individuals convicted of offenses related to events that occurred at or near the United States Capitol on January 6, 2021,” a sweeping phrase that federal officials, journalists and legal analysts have estimated covered roughly 1,500–1,600 defendants who had been charged or convicted in January 6 cases [1] [3] [4]. Newsweek, Reuters, The Guardian and other outlets compiled lists or counts shortly after the action, and legal scholars flagged the scale and novelty of such a broad, group-based pardon [3] [7] [8] [6].
4. Where reporters and researchers find consolidated records and lists
Researchers rely primarily on three sources: the White House proclamation itself for the legal directive [1], the Justice Department/Office of the Pardon Attorney for implementation details and certificate issuance [2], and major news organizations that have compiled names and counts — for example Newsweek’s “full list” and BBC coverage that lists the 14 commuted defendants — which serve as accessible catalogs when official list-keeping lags or omits granular identifiers [3] [5]. Wikipedia has also aggregated reporting into a single article summarizing the action and named beneficiaries, but it is derivative of primary government postings and media reporting [4].
5. Legal ambiguity, disputes and downstream records battles
Legal commentators and news outlets emphasize that the proclamation’s broad language created disputes over who qualified, how pardons apply to related non-January-6 charges, and what administrative role the DOJ would play in defining coverage — matters that spawned litigation and internal DOJ questions about implementation [9] [1]. Reuters and academic sources reported immediate consequences — including threats and advocacy by pardoned individuals and new legal fights over the scope and meaning of the pardons — meaning that contemporaneous media and DOJ follow-ups remain the primary way to track changing official records and prosecutions post-clemency [7] [6].
6. Bottom line for the public record
The authoritative published records of these actions are the White House proclamation (text and instructions) and the Justice Department/Office of the Pardon Attorney’s implementation pages; journalists and legal scholars have used those documents to report that 14 named Oath Keepers/Proud Boys had sentences commuted and that a blanket pardon was issued to roughly 1,500–1,600 other defendants, with media lists filling in names and post-pardon developments [1] [2] [3] [5]. Where questions remain — about exact counts, individual identity matching, or later supplemental pardons — the official pages and major investigative outlets are the sources to watch; this analysis relies on those published records and contemporaneous reporting [1] [2] [3].