After his win in the presidential election, Donald Trump told “Time” magazine that he was still considering pardoning his supporters who were involved in the Jan. 6, 2021, attack on the U.S. Capitol, but he was particularly eyeing those who were charged with “non-violent” crimes.
“I’m going to do case-by-case, and if they were non-violent, I think they’ve been greatly punished,” he said.
Instead, on his first day in office, Trump went far broader, issuing pardons for most of the more than 1,500 people charged with crimes in the Jan. 6 attack. His actions have paved the way for the releases of numerous people found guilty of violent attacks.
Here are some of them:
Tyler Bradley Dykes
The FBI received information from a confidential source, which included images, that identified Tyler Bradley Dykes’ unique facial features, including his eyebrows.
Dykes, of Bluffton, South Carolina, was sentenced to 57 months in federal prison for stealing a police riot shield and twice using it against officers. He pleaded guilty to two felony counts of assaulting, resisting or impeding officers.
Prosecutors accused Dykes of giving a “Sieg Heil!” (Hail to victory!) salute during the attack, which he denied. Prosecutors also said that Dykes quoted Adolf Hitler before the attack and that he had participated in a training for a neo-Nazi accelerationist group, The Base.
When Dykes, who was discharged from the Marines for “participating in extremist behavior,” was taken into federal custody, he was serving a five-year sentence for his actions in the racist “Unite the Right” rally in Charlottesville, Virginia, in 2017.
Andrew Taake
Andrew Taake at the Capitol on Jan. 6.
Taake, of Houston, was sentenced to a little more than six years for assaulting law enforcement officers with bear spray and a metal whip. On Dec. 20, 2023, he pleaded guilty to one count of assaulting, resisting or impeding officers using a dangerous weapon. A sting operation launched by a woman on the dating app Bumble after the Jan. 6 attack led to his arrest. Taake and other Jan. 6 participants gave up information to her about their activities during the attack, which she provided to investigators.
Taake was on pretrial release on a charge of soliciting a minor at the time of the attack. He was among the first to breach the restricted perimeter of the Capitol grounds and swarm the West Plaza, prosecutors said.
Christopher Quaglin
Christopher Quaglin, left, outside the U.S. Capitol on Jan. 6, 2021.
Quaglin, who federal prosecutors said “viciously assaulted numerous officers” and was one of the most violent rioters, was sentenced to 12 years in federal prison.
On July 10, 2023, he was found guilty of 14 charges: 12 felonies and two misdemeanors.
“On at least a dozen occasions, Quaglin stood face-to-face with officers as he screamed at, pushed with outstretched arms, punched, swatted, and slapped officers; pushed bike racks into officers; and even choked one officer to the ground,” prosecutors wrote in a sentencing memo.
According to prosecutors, Quaglin said on social media that he traveled to Washington to fight in what he believed would be a “CIVIL WAR!” against a tyrannical government and that he intended to show the members of Congress who their bosses were.
Quaglin, of North Brunswick, New Jersey, lashed out at the U.S. district judge who sentenced him, Trevor McFadden, whom Trump appointed in 2017.
“You’re Trump’s worst mistake of 2016,” Quaglin told McFadden in a lengthy statement at his sentencing.
McFadden told Quaglin that he had falsely claimed the attack was mostly peaceful.
“You were anything but peaceful on that day,” he said. “You’re a menace to our society.”
Taylor James Johnatakis
Taylor James Johnatakis.
Johnatakis, of Kingston, Washington, was convicted of three felonies in November 2023: obstruction of an official proceeding, assaulting officers and civil disorder. Johnatakis represented himself at trial and indicated that did not think he was subject to the laws governing the United States.
He was also convicted of four misdemeanors: entering and remaining in a restricted building or grounds, disorderly and disruptive conduct in a restricted building or grounds, engaging in physical violence in a restricted building or grounds and engaging in an act of physical violence in the grounds of any of the Capitol building. He was sentenced to seven years in federal prison.
Prosecutors said that he “coordinated a violent assault on a line of police officers defending” the Capitol and that video shows he “used a metal barricade to attack officers head on and grabbed one officer to prevent him from defending himself against other attacking rioters — contributing to that officer’s physical injury.”
Before the attack, Johnatakis said on social media that he was going to Washington, D.C., “to CHANGE the course of HISTORY #stopthesteal” and “What the British did to DC will be nothing…”
David Dempsey
David Dempsey in front of gallows at the Capitol on Jan. 6, 2021.
Dempsey, who, according to prosecutors, “was one of the most violent rioters,” received one of the longest sentences: 20 years in prison. The FBI arrested him in August 2021. He traveled from his home in Santa Ana, California, to Washington with others and attended the “Stop the Steal” rally at the Ellipse on the morning of Jan. 6.
Later that day, Dempsey said various Democratic politicians, including “Clinton,” “Obama,” Jerry Nadler and Nancy Pelosi, should be hanged and called them “pieces of garbage” and other expletives, prosecutors said.
Dempsey walked with others toward the Capitol and made his way to the Lower West Terrace Tunnel, where some of the most violent attacks against law enforcement occurred, prosecutors said. He joined the crowd, pushing into a line of police officers defending the tunnel, prosecutors also said.
Dempsey climbed over fellow rioters “like human scaffolding” and used “his hands, feet, flag poles, crutches, pepper spray, broken pieces of furniture, and anything else he could get his hands on” as weapons against officers, according to prosecutors.
Nearly three years later to the day, on Jan. 4, 2024, Dempsey pleaded guilty to two felony counts of assaulting, resisting or impeding officers with a deadly or dangerous weapon.
Prosecutors said Dempsey had a “very significant history of arrests and convictions.” He assaulted anti-Trump protesters with bear spray in 2019, which resulted in a two-year suspended sentence. He also assaulted a counterprotester with a skateboard in 2019, used the same skateboard to assault another person at a political protest the following year and hit a person with a metal bat during another 2020 protest.
Daniel Rodriguez
Daniel Rodriguez.
Rodriguez, of Fontana, California, used a stun gun and plunged it into the neck of Washington Police Officer Michael Fanone multiple times. Fanone has been one of the most vocal critics of the rioters.
Rodriguez traveled to Washington with fellow Trump supporters who belonged to a Telegram group called the “PATRIOTS 45 MAGA Gang.” Prosecutors said he was the administrator of the group.
“There will be blood,” Rodriguez wrote in a “MAGA Gang” Telegram chat the night before the Jan. 6 attack. “Welcome to the revolution.”
He would go on to attend Trump’s rally at the Ellipse. On Jan. 6, after having joined the fight in the Capitol’s Lower West Tunnel, Rodriguez attacked Fanone. He later bragged about his actions in the Telegram chat, writing: “Omg I did so much f—ing s— rn [right now] and got away,” and “Tazzed the f— out of the blue.”
He pleaded guilty in February 2023 to felony conspiracy, obstruction of an official proceeding, tampering with documents or proceedings and inflicting bodily injury on officers using a deadly or dangerous weapon. He was sentenced to 12 years in prison.
Ahead of his sentencing, Rodriguez said in a rambling 20-minute speech that he “truly” thought a civil war was going to begin and that he believed the Proud Boys and the Oath Keepers formed because police were standing down across the country. He acknowledged his actions against Fanone but did not apologize.
Before he was sentenced, Fanone said, in part: “Any compassion or empathy I felt toward those who laid siege to our Capitol, whose actions I felt were at least in part influenced by their leader, Donald Trump, and his lies, has been eroded — eroded by the attacks directed at me and my family by supporters of Donald Trump and the right-wing media.”
Ryan Nichols
Photo evidence in an FBI affidavit showing Ryan Nichols at the Capitol on Jan. 6, 2021.
Nichols, of Longview, Texas, assaulted officers with pepper spray, and later on Jan. 6, at his hotel room, he called for additional violence.
Nichols confessed on video in the third person. He was arrested in Texas on Jan. 18, 2021.
He pleaded guilty in November 2023 to one felony count each of obstruction of an official proceeding and assaulting officers performing their duties.
He was sentenced to more than five years in prison. In a video recorded before he took part in the attack, Nichols said the mob would lynch elected officials who voted to certify Joe Biden’s presidential victory.
“Ryan Nichols said it, if you voted for f—ing treason we’re going to drag your f—ing a– through the streets,” he said in the video as he marched to the Capitol.
After he was seen on video spraying a giant canister of a chemical weapon at officers inside the Lower West Terrace Tunnel, Nichols bragged about his conduct on Facebook and called for more violence.
“So if you want to know where Ryan Nichols stands, Ryan Nichols stands for violence,” he said in a video cited by prosecutors.
Prosecutors sought an 83-month sentence, noting that Nichols said repeatedly that he was ready to die for his cause.
“I will f—ing die for this,” Nichols said on video after the attack. “But before I do that, I plan on making other people die first, for their country, if it gets down to that.”
At his sentencing, U.S. District Judge Royce Lamberth said that while Nichols’ apology at his sentencing hearing appeared to be sincere, he made “very rigorous comments” on tape about his desire for future violence.
This article was originally published on NBCNews.com
