 | By Charlie Mahtesian | Presented by American Edge Project | | 
Oath Keepers Founder Stewart Rhodes speaks with reporters outside of the Longworth House Office Building cafeteria on Capitol Hill today. Rhodes was pardoned by President Donald Trump for his connection with the January 6 attack. | Kent Nishimura/Getty Images | THE CANDIDATE PIPELINE — There’s no stronger evidence that Donald Trump is feeling the full measure of his recent victory than his sweeping pardon of more than 1,500 individuals charged with crimes in the Jan. 6 Capitol attack. It’s no surprise that Trump would pardon the rioters — both violent and non-violent. He suggested as much on the campaign trail. What’s stunning is the enormous risk of political capital at the start of his term. In one of his first actions in office, Trump bucked a clear majority of Americans who, according to polls , oppose the pardon of all people convicted of crimes during the Capitol siege. And that’s not all he’s done. Trump also planted a political time bomb for the GOP which could last long beyond his four-year term. Put aside for a moment the message the pardons and commutations send about the consequences of political violence. Or the breathtaking scope of Trump’s move — in addition to the pardons, he also ordered the attorney general to pursue the dismissal of close to 450 cases that are still pending. Or the possibilities of recidivism among the more violent offenders. Trump has just genetically altered the GOP candidate pool, undamming a river of highly motivated and radicalized prospective candidates who will be seeking elected office for years to come. Armed with the president’s blessing of their behavior from the “day of love ,” their criminal records now cleared, they will be streaming into federal, state and local primaries. Don’t believe it? Within a year of the storming of the Capitol, at least 57 individuals who either attended the Save America rally that preceded the riots, gathered at the Capitol steps or breached the Capitol itself ran for elected office. The majority of them lost, but that was before the whitewashing of the violence began, before the GOP memory-holed the entire experience and before a sitting, popularly elected president described rioters as “J6 hostages” whose prosecution was “a grave national injustice that has been perpetrated upon the American people .” In Republican primaries where the nomination will hinge on MAGA bona fides, these candidates may have an edge: Trump, the single most powerful force in the party, has portrayed them as martyrs for the cause. And to many in the reconfigured GOP, the J6ers will be running as heroes — a recent CBS poll found that 72 percent of Republicans supported pardoning those who forced their way into the Capitol. Some will view them as not entirely different from courageous prisoners of war from yesteryear like John McCain or Jeremiah Denton, both of whom returned home after harrowing imprisonment and soon thereafter won election to Congress. Some Republican traditionalists in the House and Senate have recognized the moral and political implications of the wholesale exoneration of a class of individuals who are connected to an event that will live in infamy. (More than 500 defendants were charged with assaulting, resisting, or impeding officers or employees, including approximately 163 individuals who were charged with using a deadly or dangerous weapon or causing serious bodily injury to an officer. Roughly 140 police officers were assaulted .) But many chose to look the other way. In the future, they may not be able to. A surge of J6ers — who will not be lionized outside the confines of a Republican primary — stand to exacerbate a problem that has plagued the party in recent election cycles: the so-called exotic candidate. That’s the political euphemism for the unelectable hardliners who manage to capture the GOP nomination but whose views prove so extreme that they blow what otherwise should be easy Republican victories. It won’t be long before they begin showing up in the candidate pipeline. POLITICO’s Juan Benn Jr. reports that as a small crowd of January 6 supporters stood outside the D.C. Central Detention Facility today awaiting the release of the remaining defendants charged with crimes, one of the more prominent J6ers made an announcement. “We’re all coming for their jobs. We’re talking in Congress,” yelled 39-year-old Samuel Lazar , who was greeted with cheers. Lazar, who charged the Capitol in a tactical vest with a radio attached while wearing camouflage paint on his face , admitted in court documents to spraying a chemical irritant at police officers. He claimed today that he never assaulted a police officer and that the police, in fact, attacked him. A woman filming the scene for a livestream celebrated the occasion. “We got the real men back,” she yelled in response to Lazar. Welcome to POLITICO Nightly. Reach out with news, tips and ideas at nightly@politico.com . Or contact tonight’s author at cmahtesian@politico.com or on X (formerly known as Twitter) at @PoliticoCharlie .
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| | A message from American Edge Project: New Poll: Voters continue to worry about technological threats from foreign adversaries, namely China, and see U.S. tech as part of the solution to their national security concerns. They also want policymakers to take steps to ensure the U.S. remains a global tech leader – for example, by encouraging U.S. tech innovations and open-source AI models. See the findings of our voter priorities survey. | | | | | MANY OF THE JAN 6 CAPITOL RIOTERS HAD VIOLENT CRIMINAL HISTORIES PRIOR TO JAN 6 - THESE ARE THE PEOPLE TRUMP ATTRACTS! MANY ATTACKED OFFICERS & THEY ARE NOW FREE TO JEOPARDIZE YOUR COMMUNITY! — Federal judge says Trump’s pardons can’t erase ‘immutable’ truth of Jan. 6: A federal judge sounded off today about President Donald Trump’s decision to pardon and dismiss charges against virtually all defendants who attacked the Capitol on Jan. 6, saying the “immutable” record of the violence and heroism of law enforcement that day will remain enshrined in court records. “Dismissal of charges, pardons after convictions, and commutations of sentences will not change the truth of what happened on January 6, 2021,” U.S. District Judge Colleen Kollar-Kotelly wrote in a six-page order dismissing charges against Dominic Box, whom she had previously convicted of two felony counts for his role in the riot. — Trump freed a Jan. 6 defendant charged with assaulting police. The DOJ had him arrested again on a gun charge: A Jan. 6 defendant whose felony assault charges were dismissed a day earlier was arrested today on federal gun charges that have been pending for nearly two years in Florida. Daniel Ball, one of the hundreds charged with violence on Jan. 6, 2021, aimed at police, was among the members of the mob whose charges were dismissed at the behest of President Donald Trump. Trump on Monday pardoned more than 1,000 people who stormed the Capitol that day and ordered the Justice Department to drop hundreds of pending cases. — Pentagon will send troops to border to boost security, airlift out migrants: The Pentagon is sending at least 1,500 active-duty troops to the southern border to enhance security and assist with a major military airlift of undocumented migrants. The deployment, announced by the Defense Department, is the first step in officials’ plans to act on President Donald Trump’s executive order, which uses the military to stem the flow of people illegally crossing the U.S. border. The Pentagon’s Transportation Command will use military aircraft to send more than 5,000 undocumented immigrants from San Diego and El Paso, Texas, who are detained by Customs and Border Protection, Acting Defense Secretary Robert Salesses said in a statement. The troops also will assist in building new border fences and barriers.
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| | Power shifts, razor-thin margins, and a high-stakes agenda. We’ve transformed our coverage—more reporters, more timely insights, and unmatched policy scoops. From leadership offices to committee rooms, caucus meetings, and beyond, our expert reporting keeps you ahead of the decisions that matter. Subscribe to our Inside Congress newsletter today . | | | | | | | NEW PRIORITIES — Acting deputy attorney general Emil Bove today called for a major redeployment of Justice Department resources to immigration enforcement, including redirecting anti-terrorism squads. In some of the first known actions of President Donald Trump’s Justice Department, the acting deputy AG directed the FBI’s Joint Terrorism Task Forces “to assist in the execution of President Trump’s immigration-related initiatives,” according to a DOJ-wide memo obtained by POLITICO. That refocus could roil many of the task forces, since many members of those teams are state and local police and some are forbidden by sanctuary laws or policies from engaging in immigration crackdowns. NO CABINET, NO RECESS — Top Senate Republicans are vowing to stay in session until all of President Donald Trump’s Cabinet nominees are confirmed — a pledge that could keep senators in Washington for weeks due to Democratic delay tactics. “We’re not intending to go on recess,” said Wyoming Sen. John Barrasso, the No. 2 Senate Republican. “We want to get the entire Cabinet confirmed before we talk at all about going into a recess.” WOW! MAGA CLOWNS DEFEND PETE HEGSETH! NOT MOVING — The Republican wall of support around Pete Hegseth shows no sign of weakening, despite new allegations against the Defense secretary nominee that he was abusive to his second wife . GOP senators waved away the accusations from Hegseth’s former sister-in-law, which senators received Tuesday in an affidavit. The former Fox News host would need more than three Republicans to vote against him — and that doesn’t appear likely to happen. “It’s desperate,” said Sen. Eric Schmitt (R-Mo.). “This is a sad attempt by Democrats to oust a reformer.”
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Election campaign billboards in Berlin show German Chancellor Olaf Scholz (right) of the German Social Democrats and chancellor candidate Friedrich Merz of the German Christian Democrats. | Sean Gallup/Getty Images | THE ANTI-MERKEL — Friedrich Merz, the candidate leading the race to become Germany’s next chancellor, is all but running against his conservative predecessor : Angela Merkel. At a campaign rally in the northern Germany city of Flensburg, Merz presented himself as the antithesis of Merkel, a fellow Christian Democrat and a four-term chancellor, particularly on the issue of migration. “We can’t do this!” Merz told the crowd earlier this week, playing on Merkel’s famous 2015 mantra — “We can do this!” — during an unprecedented refugee influx that year. At the time, Merkel’s pronouncement symbolized Germany’s proverbial “welcome culture,” which manifested in its willingness to take in several hundred thousand asylum seekers. Merz’s motive in distancing himself so firmly from Merkel’s legacy is clear. Ahead of a national election set for Feb. 23, Merz’s center-right Christian Democratic Union (CDU) is in a fierce fight to keep more conservatives from defecting to the far-right Alternative for Germany (AfD) party — and views Merkel’s legacy as a liability. WE’VE GOT A WARRANT — Judicial authorities in France have issued a new arrest warrant for Syria’s ousted leader Bashar al-Assad for suspected complicity in war crimes stemming from an attack on civilians in 2017, French media reported today. The Jan. 20 warrant links Assad, who also served as the head of Syria’s armed forces, to a bombing in civilian-populated Deraa in that year that killed Salah Abou Nabout, a 59-year-old Franco-Syrian national, a legal source told AFP. An investigation into the case was opened in 2018, at which time judges issued arrest warrants for six high-ranking Syrian army officials who they believed had been following Assad’s orders.
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| | | DINING IN D.C. — Opinions about the food scene in the nation’s capital vary wildly. Some locals insist that the food is some of the best in the country, while others who travel elsewhere, come back and feel like the bang is not often worth the buck. But whether you’re a D.C. native or simply have plans to travel to the city, there’s nothing better than a guiding list to consider. Staff at The Washingtonian have put together their top 100 restaurants in the city to peruse and argue about here .
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On this date in 2009: President Barack Obama caps his pen after he signed an executive order closing the prison at Guantanamo Bay. In response to bipartisan national security concerns, though, the prison never fully closed and remains operational today. | Charles Dharapak/AP | Did someone forward this email to you? Sign up here .
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| | A message from American Edge Project: American tech innovation, especially in AI, is so important: it drives prosperity, defends our freedom, and ensures America stays on top.
To secure our leadership, policymakers must partner with the private sector and champion open- and closed-source AI development, while avoiding misguided regulations that risk weakening us and handing the future to authoritarian regimes. See our voter priorities survey. | | | | |
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