Fat former President Trump on Friday once again claimed he would consider pardoning his fans convicted of crimes committed at his command during the January 6th insurrection and once again we need to point out he could’ve fucking done it before he left office but did not.

As we’ve written twice before, because the scope of presidential pardons is not settled law, and a person need not be even accused of a federal crime, let alone prosecuted and convicted to be pardoned (like Richard Nixon in 1974, draft dodgers let off the hook by Jimmy Carter in 1977, and Steve Bannon in 2021), the fact is that Trump had two weeks to pardon most, if not all of the Capitol rioters and didn’t. The 58 who were arrested between January 6th and 19th could 100% have been pardoned as could the 100 or 200 more who had been identified but not yet arrested.

Whether or not the remainder, the ones who took longer to be identified by federal investigators and then cuffed by FBI agents after Biden had been inaugurated could have been granted a blanket pardon is an open question, but we’re not bearish on that. Either the answer is yes, or Merrick Garland would’ve faced an absolute clusterfuck slog of a fight getting it through the courts that maybe slightly more likely than not would have ultimately prevailed, but would have constrained Biden and every subsequent president’s pardon power so why bother. But that question is academic. What is not is that a low three figure number of Capitol rioters arrested or positively identified by federal law enforcement by the morning of January 20th, 2021 who could have definitely been pardoned were not. At least two of them even lobbied for it and still got locked up anyway because Trump didn’t give a shit about them. Why should they believe him now?