At least four well-respected current and retired federal judges have spoken out to denounce President Donald Trump’s sweeping, unilateral pardons of over 1500 people convicted of numerous crimes related to the January 6 insurrection and attack on the Capitol, and his commutations for “14 members of far-right extremist groups.” A constitutional scholar and retired Harvard law professor has suggested Trump’s acts of clemency could be considered a “high crime and misdemeanor,” worthy of impeachment.

“No stroke of a pen and no proclamation can alter the facts of what took place on January 6, 2021,” wrote U.S. District Judge Amy Berman Jackson, the latest judge to denounce the pardons, as Politico’s senior legal affairs reporter Kyle Cheney reported. “When others in the public eye are not willing to risk their own power or popularity by calling out lies when they hear them, the record of the proceedings in this courthouse will be available to those who seek the truth.”

Judge Jackson pointed to “the hundreds of law enforcement officers who put their lives on the line against impossible odds to protect not only the U.S. Capitol building and the people who worked there,” and noted that those workers “were huddled inside in terror as windows and doors were shattered.”

She wrote of “those valiant officers who fulfilled their oaths to ‘support and defend the Constitution of the United States against all enemies, foreign and domestic.'”

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“They are the patriots. Patriotism is loyalty to country and loyalty to the Constitution –  not loyalty to a single head of state.”

A second jurist also denounced Trump’s pardons.

Trump “said the clemency would begin a process of ‘reconciliation’ and correct a ‘grave national injustice’, but in a scathing order on Wednesday the US district judge Beryl Howell disagreed,” The Guardian reported.

“No ‘national injustice’ occurred here, just as no outcome-determinative election fraud occurred in the 2020 presidential election,” Howell wrote.

“No ‘process of national reconciliation’ can begin when poor losers, whose preferred candidate loses an election, are glorified for disrupting a constitutionally mandated proceeding in Congress and doing so with impunity,” she added. “This court cannot let stand the revisionist myth relayed in this presidential pronouncement.”

U.S. District Judge Tanya Chutkan, who presided over Trump’s January 6 attack and election subversion case prosecuted by Special Counsel Jack Smith, delivered one of the more scathing denunciations.

She wrote that the pardons “cannot whitewash the blood, feces, and terror that the mob left in its wake,” as The Guardian also reported.

“It cannot repair the jagged breach in America’s sacred tradition of peacefully transitioning power,” Chutkan continued.“In hundreds of cases like this one over the past four years, judges in this district have administered justice without fear or favor. The historical record established by those proceedings must stand, unmoved by political winds, as a testament and as a warning.”

On Wednesday, a well-known retired U.S. District Judge, who served on the federal bench for over three decades, also condemned Trump’s pardons.

“Former U.S District Judge Shira Scheindlin agrees with the judges who sentenced the Jan. 6 rioters and are criticizing Trump’s pardons,”  CNN’s Kaitlan Collins noted.

“They had a trial before a jury and the jury convicted them,” Judge Scheindlin said (video below). “This is all nonsense. These people are not hostages. They’re not heroes. They’re not political prisoners. They’re criminals. They attacked people. They assaulted people.”

Repeatedly calling Trump’s acts of clemency “overly broad,” Judge Scheindlin told Collins, “I know the views of probably every judge, no matter who appointed that judge, or Republican president, Democratic president, it doesn’t matter. The process worked, the trials were fair. As you said, many of these people pled guilty. There there’s really no excuse for this.”

“They sat through trials, they worked hard on those trials,” she said of the judges. The people who were convicted “had a chance to tell their stories.”

“They had a trial before a jury and the jury convicted them. So, this is all nonsense. These people are not hostages, they’re not heroes, they’re not political prisoners. They’re criminals, they attacked people, they assaulted people, they committed property damage. They committed so many crimes, of course, the seditious conspiracy that you mentioned, and they were convicted and sentenced. So I understand there’s a pardon power, but this was overly broad.”

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“All these people, I thought [Trump] was going to separate them, violent and the nonviolent. That’s what JD Vance told us…It didn’t happen. He just pardoned all of them because he can.”

Retired Harvard Law Professor Laurence Tribe, a well-regarded constitutional scholar, responded:

“Absolutely right, Judge Scheindlin. These pardons are legally authorized but constitutionally unpardonable. Their issuance is a ‘high crime and misdemeanor’ within the meaning of the Impeachment Clause because it is a clear abuse of presidential power.”

Watch the video below or at this link.

Former U.S District Judge Shira Scheindlin agrees with the judges who sentenced the Jan. 6 rioters and are criticizing Trump’s pardons: “They had a trial before a jury and the jury convicted them. This is all nonsense. These people are not hostages. They’re not heroes. They’re… pic.twitter.com/hLb5pnny7f

— Kaitlan Collins (@kaitlancollins) January 23, 2025

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Image via Reuters 

One of President Donald Trump’s several broken campaign promises was highlighted by a question Thursday as he spoke at the World Economic Forum in Davos, Switzerland, where he refused to say if Russia’s illegal war against Ukraine would be over in a year.

On the campaign trail, Trump infamously vowed that he would end the war, started by Russian President Vladimir Putin, within “24 hours,” and at one point he suggested he would end it if re-elected — even before being sworn in as president.

“I would fix that within 24 hours, and if I win, before I get into the office, I will have that war settled. 100% sure,” Trump said on Fox News in March 2024, according to HuffPost.

“Before I even arrive at the Oval Office, shortly after we win the presidency, I will have the horrible war between Russia and Ukraine settled — we’re going to get it settled and stop the death,” Trump adamantly told supporters in June 2024.

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“If I’m president, I will have that war settled in one day, 24 hours,” Trump said again just months later, at a CNN town hall in May 2023, as TIME reported. “It will be over. It will be absolutely over.”

But on Thursday, Trump had a very different response.

“Mr. President, when you’re back here in Davos next year, will there be then a peace agreement with Ukraine and Russia by then?” World Economic Forum President and CEO Borge Brende asked Trump, who appeared virtually (video below).

“Well, you’re gonna have to ask Russia,” was Trump’s response, completely sidestepping his multiple campaign promises.

“Ukraine is ready to make a deal,” he offered, before shifting the blame. “This is a war that should have never started. If I were president, it would never have started. This is a war that should have never, ever been started. And it wasn’t started during my — there was never even talk about it. I knew that it was the apple of President Putin’s eye, but I also knew that there was no way he was going in and he wasn’t gonna go in.”

“And then, uh, when I was out, uh, bad things happened, bad things were said. And a lot of stupidity all around and you end up with what you have.”

Putin’s war against Ukraine started in 2014. The February 2022 incursion was an escalation, but Russia was unlawfully occupying parts of Ukraine during Trump’s first presidency.

Recently, Trump has used his social media platform to levy threats of levying tariffs against Russia if Putin does not end the war. It is unclear if the incoming Trump administration has done more than that.

“Responding to the threat of harsher sanctions, the Kremlin said it remains ‘ready for an equal dialogue, a mutually respectful dialogue,'” the BBC reported Thursday.

Russian President Vladimir Putin’s spokesman, Dmitry Peskov, reportedly said, “We’re waiting for signals that are yet to arrive.”

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BBC reports, “He added that Russia sees nothing new in Donald Trump’s threats to impose sanctions.”

“He likes these methods, at least he liked them during his first presidency,” Peskov said.

On Wednesday, Trump had written a lengthy missive pleading with and threatening Putin to end the war.

“I’m not looking to hurt Russia. I love the Russian people, and always had a very good relationship with President Putin – and this despite the Radical Left’s Russia, Russia, Russia HOAX,” Trump claimed. “We must never forget that Russia helped us win the Second World War, losing almost 60,000,000 lives in the process. All of that being said, I’m going to do Russia, whose Economy is failing, and President Putin, a very big FAVOR. Settle now, and STOP this ridiculous War! IT’S ONLY GOING TO GET WORSE. If we don’t make a ‘deal,’ and soon, I have no other choice but to put high levels of Taxes, Tariffs, and Sanctions on anything being sold by Russia to the United States, and various other participating countries.”

“Let’s get this war, which never would have started if I were President, over with! We can do it the easy way, or the hard way – and the easy way is always better. It’s time to “MAKE A DEAL.” NO MORE LIVES SHOULD BE LOST!!!”

Watch the video below or at this link.

Q: Will there be a peace agreement with Ukraine and Russia by next year?

TRUMP: Well, you’ll have to ask Russia

(Trump promised to end the war before he even took office.) pic.twitter.com/HSP5bUjBSS

— Aaron Rupar (@atrupar) January 23, 2025

READ MORE: Trump May Invite J6 Pardoned Convicts to the White House: CNN

Image via Reuters

President Donald Trump, who made baseless attacks against FEMA during his 2024 campaign, suggested on Wednesday night that he wants to defund the Homeland Security emergency management agency and shift the burden for disaster relief to individual states. The move would revoke federal responsibility for managing crises like hurricanes, earthquakes, flooding, and wildfires. While his remarks appear to align with The Heritage Foundation’s Project 2025, he appears to have gone further in appointing an interim FEMA head who reportedly “does not appear to have experience coordinating responses to large scale disasters.”

Although he has repeatedly denied knowing anything about Project 2025, despite at least 140 of his former administration’s officials having been involved with the program, President Trump appears to be following the far-right plan to eliminate or largely downsize the 45-year-old agency. Its current incarnation was created by President Jimmy Carter, but the federal government of the United States has been assisting states with disaster relief for well over 200 years.

“Now, I will say that Los Angeles has changed everything, because a lot of money’s gonna be necessary for Los Angeles, and a lot of people on the other side want that to happen,” Trump told Fox News’ Sean Hannity in a pre-taped interview that aired Wednesday night (video below). In recent weeks, California’s wildfires, fueled in part by climate change according to Scientific American, have decimated large swaths of the Los Angeles area, killing dozens of people.

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“Well, they don’t care about North Carolina. The Democrats don’t care about North Carolina. What they’ve done with FEMA is so bad. FEMA is a whole other discussion. Because all it does is complicate everything,” Trump baselessly charged. “FEMA has not done their job for the last four years. You know, I had FEMA working really well, we had hurricanes in Florida, we had Alabama, tornadoes, we had. — but unless you have certain types of leadership, it’s really, it gets in the way.”

“And FEMA is gonna be a whole big discussion very shortly because I’d rather see the states take care of their own problems,” Trump declared, alluding to wanting to dismantle the agency. “If they have a tornado, someplace, and if they have —  let that state, Oklahoma is very competent. I love Oklahoma. 77 out a 77 districts and uh that’s never been done,” he claimed, referring to his Electoral College win.

On Thursday, The Independent reported, “Trump wants to shut down the Federal Emergency Management Agency and let states handle their own disaster needs.”

Project 2025 describes the Department of Homeland Security as a “bloated” bureaucracy that would “provide real opportunities for a conservative Administration to cut billions in spending and limit government’s role in Americans’ lives.”

It calls for “privatizing” FEMA’s National Flood Insurance Program, and “reforming FEMA emergency spending to shift the majority of preparedness and response costs to states and localities instead of the federal government,” as well as “eliminating most of DHS’s grant programs, and removing all unions in the department for national security purposes.”

Trump’s remark, “I’d rather see the states take care of their own problems,” is similar to a portion of Project 2025’s proposal.

But Trump appears to have taken yet another step that could harm FEMA.

READ MORE: Trump May Invite J6 Pardoned Convicts to the White House: CNN

Trump has appointed a former Navy SEAL, Cameron Hamilton, who “does not appear to have experience coordinating responses to large-scale disasters, like the wildfires in California,” to be the interim head of FEMA, according to The New York Times.

“Mr. Hamilton is an unusual choice to lead the agency, even in a temporary capacity. Since Hurricane Katrina, when the federal response was severely criticized, FEMA has been led by disaster management professionals who have run state or local emergency management agencies, or were regional administrators at FEMA,” the Times reported. “Mr. Hamilton does not appear to have experience coordinating responses to large scale disasters like the wildfires that are raging in Los Angeles or the hurricanes, floods and earthquakes that FEMA typically manages.”

Watch the video below or at this link.

Trump: “FEMA is gonna be a whole big discussion very shortly, because I’d rather see the states takes care of their own problems.” pic.twitter.com/wiwRCeqSMc

— Aaron Rupar (@atrupar) January 23, 2025

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Image via Reuters