Jan 6 rioters expect Trump will keep pardon promise

Out of all of Donald Trump’s supporters, Derrick Evans has a particular reason to be happy with November’s election results – he hopes the president-elect will give him a pardon for participating in the 6 January riots at the US Capitol.

“A pardon will be life changing,” said Evans, who was a member of the West Virginia legislature when he and at least 2,000 others stormed the Capitol in 2021. It was part of an effort to overturn the results of the US election, inspired by the false belief that it was Trump, not President Joe Biden, who had won.

He reached an agreement with prosecutors which saw him plead guilty to civil disorder and spent three months in federal prison in 2022. On the campaign trail, Trump repeatedly said he would pardon the rioters, whom he has called “patriots” and “political prisoners”. But who exactly will be pardoned – and when – is still an open question.

“I believe he’s a man of his word,” Evans told the BBC.

In March, Trump wrote on his Truth Social account that one of his first acts as president would be to “Free the January 6 Hostages being wrongfully imprisoned!”

He repeated the pledge at a National Association of Black Journalists forum in Chicago in July.

“Oh, absolutely, I would,” he said. “If they’re innocent, I would pardon them.”

But he has stopped short of proposing a blanket pardon, at one point telling CNN: “I am inclined to pardon many of them. I can’t say for every single one, because a couple of them, probably they got out of control.”

His campaign has previously said decisions would be made “on a case-by-case basis when he is back in the White House”.