William Shipley, an attorney representing dozens of J6 defendants, including the so-called Qanon Shaman, told The Daily Wire this week that President Donald Trump’s sweeping action for J6 defendants, even for those accused of violence, was necessary due to the Biden DOJ’s refusal to give the accused fair trials.
Trump’s executive order, which was signed just hours after Trump was sworn into office, granted full pardons for every person convicted in relation to J6, with the exception of 14 commutations. The EO also ordered dismissals for the hundreds of cases awaiting trial or sentencing.
“ I have said this publicly, I have filed this argument, I have argued it in court to multiple judges: the reality is that January 6 defendants could not receive a fair trial in the District of Columbia given the juror pool,” Shipley told The Daily Wire.
“The government never moved off of that position, and demanded that the cases go forward in the District of Columbia, knowing that to be true, which is reflected by the fact that so many defendants opted for bench trials to avoid the D.C. jurors,” the attorney continued. “I mean, that speaks volumes.”
J6 defendants “could not get their 5th and 6th Amendment rights to a fair trial in the District of Columbia,” which “justifies the pardons,” Shipley said. “The Biden Justice Department has themselves to blame for that fact.”
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On Monday evening, Trump reasoned that the J6 defendants accused of violence have already done their time.
“I will say this, they’ve been in jail for a long time already,” the president told the press. “I see murderers in this country get two years, one year, and maybe no time. So they’ve already been in jail for a long time. These people have been destroyed, what they’ve done to these people is outrageous.”
Shipley noted former President Joe Biden’s last-minute pardons for his family members and the dozens of controversial commutations for violent death row inmates in context with Trump’s sweeping J6 pardons.
“I think after the Biden administration did what they did with just the massive pardons on their way out the door — I don’t know that that had any actual influence on what the Trump administration decided to do, but I don’t think anybody was really anticipating a sweeping set of pardons and commutations of sentences to time served across the board, resulting in the release of everybody.”
The attorney told The Daily Wire that there were 211 J6ers in custody at the time Trump’s executive order was signed. They are all now out of custody, despite some delays.
When Shipley was contacted by his clients’ family about delays, he said he was able to get in touch with Trump administration officials who helped to quickly secure releases. However, that was not the case in Washington D.C., where the longest delays took place.
“Now there is the problem in D.C. that has persisted until just the last hour or so where the District of Columbia Department of Corrections, which is not part of the Federal Bureau of Prisons, they did not respond in the same way and they just said, ‘Well, we’ll do it tomorrow,'” Shipley said on Tuesday.
