Speaker 1: The leaders of the Proud Boys and the Oath Keepers were free following their pardons yesterday. At the time, back in 2021, you urged them to stand back and stand by. Is there now a place for them in the political conversation?

Speaker 2: Well, we have to see. They've been given a pardon. I thought their sentences were ridiculous and excessive.

Speaker 3: We'll have to see. Today, Tarrio spoke to Alex Jones and told him, quote, the people who did this, they need to feel the heat, they need to be put behind bars, and they need to be prosecuted. More now on all this from Cine Asdonio-Sullivan, who was outside the D.C. jail last night when all this went down. I spoke today with some of the pardoned inmates.

Speaker 4: Edward, you're a true patriot.

Speaker 5: I'm so glad you're here. I don't even know what to feel. I mean, I guess I should feel joy, but I just, maybe I'm just shocked.

Speaker 6: The end of a long road for Rachel Powell, pardoned by President Trump and released Tuesday from a jail here in Washington, D.C. Rachel became known as the Pink Hat Lady when footage emerged of her breaking a window at the Capitol with an ice axe during the January 6th attack. A mom to eight and a grandmother to seven, I interviewed Rachel before she began what was supposed to be a years-long prison sentence last year.

Speaker 7: How do I have time to plan an insurrection when my life is busy like this?

Speaker 6: On her release on Tuesday, she was met by activists who gave her new clothes, new boots, and a new pink hat.

Speaker 8: Glory. Hallelujah. Thank you, Lord. This man came from the Philadelphia jail. He got out at 3 a.m. That doesn't make sense. He's wearing prison shoes and Philadelphia's finest prison gear.

Speaker 6: Pardoned January 6ers from elsewhere began arriving in Washington, like William Patrick Sarsfield III, who was convicted of a felony offense of obstruction of law enforcement during a civil disorder.

Speaker 9: Well, I heard through different apps and different programs and different phone calls from people that we still had brothers and sisters that were still locked up and haven't been released. And being somebody that's been in D.C., that everybody should be released. If it's a pardon for J6ers, it's for all of us.

Speaker 6: You got out of prison last night?

Speaker 10: Well, I was locked up for three and a half years, and I was taken to the halfway house

Speaker 6: on August 29th. Robert Morris says he was released from a halfway house in Pittsburgh late last night and came to D.C. to celebrate. Back up. Morris, a former Army Ranger, was found guilty of assaulting police officers, among other crimes on January 6th.

Speaker 10: I had no intention of going anywhere near the Capitol that day. That's how crazy this got. So a lot of people were taken advantage of, and we were lured into a lobster trap that January 6th was designed to be.

Speaker 6: In terms of personal responsibility, do you take, I mean, do you regress?

Speaker 10: Completely. Without a doubt. I said that in my sentencing speech. I said the words, Donald Trump did not force me or coerce me to do what I did that day. I did it on my own accord.

Speaker 6: What's your message to people watching this who say, she shouldn't have been pardoned, none of these people should have got out of prison, they're criminals?

Speaker 5: OK, you know what? It's time to stop worrying about that and move forward in this country.

Speaker 3: And Donnie joins us now. What's happening at the jail tonight? What are you seeing? Hey, Anderson.

Speaker 6: Yeah, just in the past few minutes, three more January 6ers were just released from the D.C. jail here. You can see they're giving interviews to local media and international press also gathered, but also a lot of MAGA media here. And one person who was just speaking over there, who I think we're showing on screen at the moment, is Jake Lang. He's a prisoner who has really built up a social media, big social media following while he has been in prison over the past while he's speaking there. So really, you can see just how emboldened these folks are. A lot of them are kind of going off and planning, basically, MAGA media careers. And but what we've also seen here over the past few hours today is different groups and people, obviously big fans of us here, Anderson, groups gathering throughout the day, including the Proud Boys here. So it really gives you a sense of the types of folks who are celebrating, at least here at the D.C. jail.

Speaker 3: All right, Donnie O'Sullivan, appreciate it.

Speaker 7: Many of the president's allies would like to stop talking about the deadly assault on the Capitol. But Trump's sweeping pardons, making that difficult as the president himself, was pressed by reporters on the issue when he spoke to them yesterday.

Speaker 11: Aren't you sending the message that assaulting officers is OK with these pardons?

Speaker 2: No, the opposite. You know, I'm the friend of I am the friend of police more than any president that's ever been in this office.

Speaker 7: Donald Trump insisting that despite his decision to pardon hundreds of people convicted of violent felonies and a power that he alone wields, insisting he supports law enforcement more than any president ever when asked about specific cases, including that of Metropolitan Police Officer Michael Fanone, who was attacked and injured while defending the Capitol four years ago. The president seemed to be unaware of the details of the convictions that he chose to wipe away.

Speaker 11: You would agree that it's never acceptable to assault a police officer. So then if I can, among those you pardon, D.J. Rodriguez, he drove a stun gun into the neck of a D.C. police officer who was abducted by the mob that day. He later confessed on video to the FBI and pleaded guilty for his crimes. Why does he deserve a pardon?

Speaker 2: Well, I don't know. Was it a pardon? Because we're looking at commutes and we're looking at pardons. OK, well, we'll take a look at everything.

Speaker 7: Was it a pardon, he asks. Yes, one that only he has the power to deliver. Joining us now, Stephen Collinson, CNN senior politics reporter, Elliott Williams, CNN legal analyst, a former federal prosecutor, Congressman Jake Auchincloss, Democrat of Maryland, Massachusetts, and Kristen Soltis Anderson, CNN political commentator and Republican strategist and pollster. Welcome to all of you. Thank you for being here. Congressman, this, of course, a return to the original Trump, first Trump administration, where members of the body in which you serve often repeatedly asked to defend what Donald Trump has done. This, what happened on January 6th, was something that was an absolute cataclysm for the institution. Many of your colleagues were trapped in the House chamber, had to be escorted out by law enforcement as rioters tried to breach the doors. What do you have to say to your colleagues there as they, some of them are trying, not all of them, not all of them are defending what Trump has done, but what goes through your mind when you watch that?

Speaker 12: Congressional Republicans are all ducking and dodging, and I never want to hear them say back to blue ever again after providing political cover for this abomination. These are people who violently assaulted officers of the law while trying to insurrect our democracy. It's not just these pardons, by the way. Last Congress, the Republicans tried to defund the FBI. This term, they're seeking to undermine the ATF's ability to regulate ghost guns. These are weapons that can pass through a metal detector without being detected. All of these things make officers of the law less safe and undermine our ability to enforce the law in this country. And yet they try to claim that they're the law and order party. It's no longer supportable.

Speaker 7: Kristen Soltis-Anderson, you spend so much time talking to Republican voters. How are they going to take in, I mean, Peter Alexander over at NBC sharply said, put these things at odds, right? You, he says to President Trump, would you dispute you are a law and order president, that you support police officers? And then he notes an example where clearly there was a police officer that was violently hurt by someone who was held accountable. And President Trump said, I'm not going to hold that person accountable anymore. Are voters going to react to this at all?

Speaker 4: So I think Vice President Vance had a better sense of the politics of this when a week and a half ago he said, you know, I imagine it would be for the nonviolent folks, that there are some folks who were convicted of things that were far less than sticking a stun gun into someone's neck and that there might be a distinction in the mind of many voters that someone who gets caught up in a crowd that's entering the building unlawfully should not be treated the same as somebody who did something horrible. With that said, now a lot of these Republicans are in a tough position that was easier for them to fall back on. Now they've got to either embrace the whole thing or distance themselves from the president. But I would say one other thing, I think something that makes the politics of this a little easier is the way that the pardon power felt abused by Biden on the way out of the office, that there, I think for voters in the center will be a little bit of a like a plague on both their houses. Why don't we reform the way presidents approach the pardon itself coming out of everything that went down on January 20th?

Speaker 5: The thing that I was most struck by is that Trump had full opportunity to make these pardons in broad daylight. Could have, you know, he had that big, beautiful ceremony with the desk at the Capital One Center, but chose not to issue the pardons then and to wait until cameras were not going to be on him in the same way. And I think they had anticipated this kind of blowback. Think about how they had aggressively teased some of the other actions they were taking. Again, staging this very large ceremony around signing. So I just think they were aware that this was going to be a bit of a clunker with many segments of the public in it and it's playing out right now.

Speaker 13: Yeah, that's true. But at the same time, I think it tells us that Trump is going to do exactly what he wants to do. I'm sure there are people in the White House, J.D. Vance, among them, who came up with this better solution politically. But Trump is really believing right now. You can tell in the way he addresses the camera. He's confident. He thinks he's all powerful. And it doesn't look, honestly, at least in Washington, that he's going to pay an immediate price. And this is a one term president who doesn't have to run again. Of course, he has to worry about the midterm elections. But what we are seeing is a president who is abrogating the rule of law quite simply. He is sending a message that violence is a legitimate tactic in politics. That's what a lot of people who are extremists will take away from this.