Alan Feuer

And that's where many of the most violent January 6th defendants are being held on pretrial detention. It's called the Freedom Corner.

And you have people who are flying flags and eating snacks, and they often call into the jail to talk to the inmates, and they livestream broadcasts with these inmates. But... Anthony is not supposed to associate himself with any other January 6th defendants or, you know, people in that community. And so...

That decision on his part really irks Judge Tanya Chutkin, who is probably best known for having been the judge who was assigned to Trump's own January 6th case. And she really kind of lays into Anthony about this particular issue. So when it comes to the moment of, okay, he's been found guilty, and now what's your sentence?

She ends up sentencing him to nine months in prison, which is, as far as these misdemeanor cases go, it's on the high end.

That's right. He decides, you know, it doesn't matter what the judge has said or what the law says. He's not turning himself in for what is supposed to be his date in June to start serving his prison term.

Sure. So this has been really my full-time job since January 6, 2021. And just to take a quick detour here, there's not just the criminal cases that we're talking about. There are other efforts that have taken place to kind of figure out what happened on January 6. Let's not forget Donald Trump's second impeachment was all about his role in inciting the riot at the Capitol.

And yet there's one more thing that's informing Anthony's decision. Trump has started campaigning explicitly on a promise to pardon the January 6th rioters.

In fact, at the very first official rally that Trump holds for his reelection campaign, he takes the stage to a recording of the national anthem being performed by a choir of January 6th inmates. These are people who are in prison in Washington, D.C., for crimes they committed on January 6th.

He's calling them hostages. He's calling them political prisoners.

Yeah, the Republican candidate for president is essentially validating Anthony's version of events. And he thinks to himself, why should I report to prison? I think I can get a pardon. Of course, what happens next is that Trump wins the election.

And there's this tidal wave of optimism among the January 6th defendants and their families. At the Freedom Corner, that vigil outside the jail that Anthony attended, they pop champagne bottles on election night. And you just saw this whole community being absolutely certain that Donald Trump was going to ride to their rescue and save them.

I mean, basically, it is the logistics. presidential pardon power is enormous. You know, Trump would just sort of write up an executive order or sign a document and poof, it's done. Like magic. Yeah. And so the debate now is really about the scope of the pardons that Trump is going to do. You know, is he going to issue a total blanket amnesty or is it going to be sort of more targeted amnesty?

to people like Anthony, who are sort of non-violent, low-level misdemeanor defendants. And they're going to involve not just a sort of question of logistics, but really a political question, and that's how much of a hit does he want to really take

There was a very expansive congressional investigation into this. And then, of course, there's what you're talking about, the Justice Department's criminal cases that have been brought with regard to January 6th. And that is the largest single investigation in the history of the Justice Department. Wow, interesting. Yeah.

If he's going to issue pardons to people who say, you know, hit a cop on the head with a two by four or maybe even more so issue pardons to members of far right groups like the Proud Boys and Oath Keepers who were found guilty of seditious conspiracy. And do we have any indication of which way Trump is going to go? That's the problem with Trump. No, of course not.

There's recent polling that suggests that a majority of this country is not interested in pardoning January 6th defendants. But there's this debate that has been sort of raging both on the outside, right? There's advocates for the family members. And then that is sort of seeped into Trump's inner circle. And I wouldn't want to call it either way at this point.

Oh, I think it would be quite destructive to the notion of the rule of law. Like I said, this is the largest investigation that the federal prosecutors have undertaken since the department was created in 1870.

And so to sort of, depending on the scope of these pardons, to sort of undo all that work in an eye blink, it'll be... you know, somewhere between a gut punch and the rug being pulled out from under you, you know, choose your metaphor. And I think it could have a quite corrosive effect on trust in the system.

Well, see, that's the remarkable thing. So from Trump's point of view and from the defendant's point of view, these pardons will not be a sort of attack on the rule of law. They will be an upholding of the rule of law because these prosecutions from their point of view, have been deemed unjust from the outset.

And so if Trump does pardon these defendants, it will be his opportunity to kind of rewrite the entire story of what the Justice Department has been doing over the past four years. And he will be able to sort of

revise the story of the Justice Department seeking accountability for an attack on American democracy into positioning the Justice Department as the villains who are out to destroy democracy, in essence. And so it's going to allow Trump to both have the imprimatur of the presidency to declare that, hey, no crimes were committed

committed at all that day, or at least it's going to allow him to sort of legally wash away the sins of many of the people who are involved in them.

And this has involved enormous amounts of visual evidence and witness evidence and cell phones seized and tips from ordinary people around the country. It's really been an unprecedented and a massive undertaking by federal prosecutors. So at the moment, we have about 1,600 people who are facing criminal charges.

So you're absolutely right. In this internet age, there's tens of thousands of hours of January 6th video out there. And in fact, there are people who have been intimately involved in scouring and cataloging that video who are right now making sure that it doesn't disappear, that that record, that bulwark of reality exists.

We've also seen in recent weeks some of the federal judges in Washington who have heard these cases and know them better than anyone have kind of stood up in public in written and oral rulings against the idea that January 6th was a nothing event. They have defended the seriousness of that day in quite remarkable public utterances.

Actually, let me read one right here. It's from a sentencing memo by a judge named Royce Lamberth, who was actually a conservative Republican appointed by Ronald Reagan. It says, to see distortions and outright falsehoods seep into the public consciousness.

I have been shocked to watch some public figures try to rewrite history, claiming rioters behaved in, quote, an orderly fashion, unquote, like ordinary tourists, or martyrizing convicted January 6th defendants as political prisoners, or even, incredibly, hostages. That is all preposterous. Hmm.

But at the same time, yes, we live in a siloed information world where people sort of see what they want to see. And so there will now be a bubble that exists that, you know, sort of has the stamp of approval from the president on it that nothing bad happened on January 6th.

I mean, look, we don't know what's going to be the final verdict about all of this, but there is a kind of Soviet aspect to sort of erasing all of this, right? That is not how the January 6th defendants obviously see it. They see this as the lifting almost of Soviet oppression on them. And so that's why there has been this tug of war all along.

Now, who's going to win that war and which version will eventually sort of emerge as victorious? I don't know. That's above my pay grade. But these tensions about the meaning of January 6th have been there. And there are practical ramifications to all of this.

I think a lot of what the erasure or revision of the January 6th story could do for Trump is that it's not only going to diminish the culpability of his supporters who were involved in the attack or, of course, diminish his own culpability, but it could do something else. It could provide him with the kind of

ideological ground to move forward into fulfilling his own promises to seek revenge on those of his enemies who took part in the attempts to hold him accountable for january 6th and that's already starting to happen right It's absolutely already starting to happen.

Just recently, Trump's congressional allies released a report recommending that Liz Cheney, the former Wyoming congresswoman who was the vice chair of the January 6th committee that recommended that Trump be charged with crimes in connection with January 6th, should herself face an FBI investigation.

And of those, most, so a little over a thousand, have either gone to trial or pled guilty. But what's been most remarkable about all of this is that of the more than 200 people who have gone to trial, Only two have been acquitted fully. So when you look at this overall, the criminal justice system has rendered a pretty clear verdict about what happened on January 6th.

And, you know, Trump is also seeking to install loyalists in the FBI and the Justice Department who may indeed carry that out in the end. I mean, I think these things are not unrelated. When you position yourself as the victim, you then have the moral standing to seek retribution against your enemies. Mm-hmm.

If you rewrite the history of what happened on January 6th, it allows you to change the heroes to villains, the villains to heroes. I mean, Anthony is certainly well aware of this. After our interview, he told me he's now in Canada. He's formally asked for asylum there, but he's also kind of just biding his time, waiting around until Trump comes back into office.

And he really does seem to believe not only that the winners write history, but that he and the other January 6th defendants are themselves poised to be the winners. That they are now in a position to write what could be the final chapter on January 6th.

And you believe that?

And you believe that history will believe that?

Thanks for having me.

It was a day of violence and an attempt to impede a central act of American democracy that resulted in more than 140 police officers being injured and also led to the deaths of four protesters.

Yeah, I've been trying to understand that myself. I mean, let's think back here. You might remember that immediately after the attack, Donald Trump called January 6th, and I'm quoting, a heinous attack on the United States Capitol. And he promised that all the lawbreakers that day would pay.

But as I followed this story, I've watched that not only has Trump changed that narrative, changed his position on it, but that he's done so almost in a kind of private dialogue with the rioters themselves. Collectively, it's as if they've come up with an alternate reality to explain what happened on January 6.

And at least for me, I found that if you want to understand that other reality and all of the really important legal and political implications that emerge from it, you kind of have to get inside the dialogue that Trump was having with the January 6 rioters first. Now, Look, I mean, I found that most people who have been charged in these cases are not willing to do long, on-the-record interviews.

But I did meet one guy who was willing to kind of sit down and walk me through his whole story with the idea of, hey, what's going to happen if and when Trump issues pardons? Hi, Anthony.

His name is Anthony Vo. I am currently 32 years old. He's kind of a young guy. He's from Indiana. And he entered the Capitol on January 6th. Didn't hurt anyone, didn't break anything. And he was ultimately convicted at trial of four low-level misdemeanors, including disorderly conduct. So in that way, he's actually pretty typical of most January 6th defendants, the majority of whom...

were charged with only relatively minor offenses, except for one thing.

He's on the run. Like, from the law? Yeah, like he's on the lam. He was supposed to report to prison after he got sentenced, and he just didn't. He skipped.

So Anthony's father fought alongside U.S. troops during the war against the Viet Cong. And after the war, his family emigrated to the United States and Anthony was born here.

His background might sound kind of surprising, but actually he's got a pretty typical story for a Trump supporter.

He saw Trump as an outsider candidate in 2015.

He doesn't trust the mainstream media.

And flash forwarding to the 2020 election, election night arrives. And as we saw with a lot of Trump supporters, Anthony does not believe it's true.

He's just steeped in this world of election conspiracy theories. Not that he would see it that way.

And he ultimately finds out that there's going to be a pro-Trump stop the steal rally in Washington on January 6th. And he's like, yes. My mom and I, he did the call. I want to be there. His family wants to go with him.

And he ends up joining a group of Vietnamese rally goers.

And so Anthony and his mom follow the crowd. And as he gets closer to the Capitol building itself, he notices people trying to go over the fence. But to him at that point, it doesn't really seem violent.

And he ends up just walking with his mom right into the Capitol building.

And they have never been inside the Capitol before, and it's quite a moving experience for them.

Yeah, yeah. I would agree with you entirely that not one thing happened on January 6th. A lot of different things happened on January 6th. But even the people who saw themselves as peaceful protesters contributed in some part to the larger chaos of what was essentially a riot that culminated in this historic and violent result.

But yes, Anthony had his own very particular story and version of events.

In his mind, what he was doing was this kind of expression of democracy. He was out there petitioning the government, right? He wanted redress for his grievances. Right. That's how he saw it. And I will never forget having read the FBI interview of one rioter who actually was quite violent.

But at the key moment, at the height of this interview, the guy kind of breaks down crying and tells these federal agents, I thought I was the good guy that day. So Anthony and his mom stay for like 20, 30 minutes. And so basically they're kicked out by a Capitol Police officer. Guy's like, gotta go. And they do. They leave the building and they eventually make their way to the D.C. Metro.

Thanks for having me.

And he's getting the news in real time from his phone about busted windows and beat up cops and, you know, like, the real bad stuff, terrible stuff that happened that day. And frankly, he says that he's shocked about all that because it didn't match his sort of personal window on January 6th.

As you learn more about the day, did your feeling towards the day change in any measurable or important way?

And what starts to happen is that not only does he cling to the idea that January 6th was not a violent event, but in fact, he begins to develop this idea that all the violence that took place that day was the fault of others, not the rioters.

It was police brutality or maybe this was all kind of a setup to begin with. Right. Was the federal government itself not setting security perimeters in the right way? You know, like where's the National Guard? And these questions began to make him doubt the culpability, like who's responsible for the violence?

Yes, and that's a quite common belief among January 6th defendants. And, you know, in the year after the attack, it really took hold in the broader right-wing media.

It's about six months later, and he is picked up by a local FBI field office in Indiana.

And so he ultimately goes to trial. He chooses to sort of put the government to his test.

And during the trial, prosecutors end up citing text messages that Anthony sent after the six, saying things like, oh, the cops had it easy that day, and it would be easy to go back to the Capitol armed. He also makes a decision to attend a vigil that has been going on at the local Washington jail for years now.