The ones that have understandably received the most attention were the 1,500 J6ers, the vast majority of which were straight up political prisoners in a blatant way never seen in the United States but common in miserable little tin-pot dictatorships. Sending most of these men and women, grandpas and grandmas, home to their loved ones is righting a terrible wrong and a blot on our nation. Some of them had been held in the DC gulag for four years without ever having a trial. People actually need to go to prison for that, but probably won’t.
Another tranche of political prisoners released from DC’s dungeons are pro-life activists who had the temerity to exercise their First Amendment rights on public land by praying and singing hymns outside one of the most important shrines of the leftist religion — abortion clinics.
Trump issued pardons for 23 pro-lifers suffering for their convictions. Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn, Soviet dissident and author of Gulag Archipelago, would be proud of their beliefs and actions. And he would recognize the kind of state that imprisoned them.
The pro-lifers were persecuted — that is, “prosecuted” — under the Freedom of Access to Clinic Entrances (FACE) Act. Signed into law in 1994 by President Bill Clinton, that law made it illegal to “obstruct access” to abortion clinics. The novel interpretation by the Garland thugs — a lot of novel legal interpretations in the Biden years — apparently concluded that obstruction included making women headed into the clinic feel uncomfortable. Because many of these offenders were not physically blocking the way. And, of course, we all know that freedom of speech and religion means never hearing or seeing anything that might cause discomfort.
“They should not have been prosecuted. This is a great honor to sign this,” President Trump said as he issued the pardons, keeping another campaign promise. "Twenty-three people were prosecuted who should not have been prosecuted. Many of them are elderly people. They should not have been prosecuted.”
A great example is a protest at a Michigan abortion clinic where pro-lifers sat on a sidewalk (public property) praying and singing hymns and (gasp!) encouraging women to let their babies live. But the Biden/Garland goons rounded them up, arrested and jailed them, claiming they were violent. Among the mostly older protestors was 89-year-old concentration camp survivor Eva Edl. Her violence must have been horrific indeed.
That these were political victims is clear enough, but even more clear was the knowledge that the FACE Act also applies to pro-life counseling centers and clinics, which were literally being blown up and vandalized during the Biden years. Yet the despicable Garland did nothing to investigate or prosecute those. Because their politics were the right kind. It hardly gets more un-American.
With all of the political prisoners being released, there is now considerable space for those in need of true justice, from Garland himself (who did not get a preemptive pardon from Biden) to his whole bevy of corruptocratic FBI agents and DOJ lawyers, along with Antifa and BLMers.
Rod Thomson is a former daily newspaper reporter and columnist, Salem radio host and ABC TV commentator, and current Founder of The Thomson Group, a Florida-based political consulting firm. He has eight children and seven grandchildren and a rapacious hunger to fight for America for them. Follow him on Twitter at @Rod_Thomson. Email him at [email protected].