Pardon of Innocence vs J6 Presidential Pardons without Innocence
J6 Pardons of Innocence vs Pardons that keep J6 as a criminal conviction.
What happens when a group is honored and rightfully respected like U.S. Veterans, but individuals within the group act dishonorably, and behave in ways not worthy of respect?
We honor veterans and our military because of what they represent. As a culture, we acknowledge and show appreciation for their sacrifice and service.
But that does not mean every individual Veteran is honorable. Some veterans do bad things.
Same principle applies to Law Enforcement (“Good Cop Bad Cop”), Education, Religion, Government, etc.
It also applies to “January 6ers”.
“January 6ers” (aka J6ers) refers to the 1,000+ Americans who were maliciously prosecuted for attending the January 6, 2021 protest at the U.S. Capital to object to the Joint Congressional 2020 Election Certification. Following near 100% conviction rate by biased Washington, D.C. courts, J6ers received Presidential Pardons on Inauguration Day, January 20, 2025, by President Donald J. Trump.
Immediately following January 6, 2021 through January 2025, while J6 political persecution prosecutions were being executed and litigated, the late Pasquale Scopelliti, David Sumrall (StopHate.com and 1AFilmFest.com) and I set out to apply our Pardon Flynn Now template to January 6ers.
As happened with our Flynn Pardon strategy (including the appearance of Q and Anon phenomenon) others joined to bring momentum and mass support to the movement including Treniss Evans (a J6ers himself with Condemned USA and American Rights Alliance), Suzanne Monk (J6PardonProject.com), Tim Rivers (The American Gulag Chronicles), Marie Goodwyn (J6 Patriot News), and many more.
I must clarify or put an asterik to my *Pardon of Innocence position.
I advocated for the Pardon of Innocence NOT because of the merit or deservingness of every individual January 6er.
Most of America and even those within the MAGA tent, in part due to the mainstream media proliferating the “violent insurrection” narrative, believe that some January 6ers did stupid, even criminal (from misdemeanor to felonies) things.
I unequivocally stand by our J6 Pardon Advocacy position of Pardons of Innocence as the desired outcome for all January 6ers regardless of their individual actions on January 6, 2021. Actions that occurred on or around January 6th should fall within grace and innocence for several reasons detailed below.
However, any J6er who engages in criminal and/or questionable actions outside of the January 6 context should be held accountable and suffer appropriate consequences.
Equally imperative, as we have written about before, is the position that January 6 convictions should NOT be allowed to be in the January 6ers “record” or be considered as prior convictions in any new charges. Unfortunately, we have several January 6ers who have suffered harsher, additional unjust prosecution because the January 6 charges were allowed or encouraged to be considered as a factor in new charges.
I advocated for Pardons of Innocence for General Flynn as well as for the January 6 Pardons. My layman’s term premise was that the government acted wrong first and therefore everything that followed was tainted by that wrongdoing.
Legal terminology to this doctrine includes “fruit of the poisonous tree” or “entrapment” or “fraud vitiates everything” (latin: fraus omnia vitiate) or any other numerous legal principles that mean the bad actor acting first nullifies what follows. (I am not a lawyer, but I am a Constitutional Republic adherent.)
Back in 2017, General Flynn was set-up.
Flynn’s first legal team undermined his defense. Patriots wanted General Flynn to be “exonerated” through the courts. Even when Attorney Sidney Powell came onboard, the prosecution et al’s objective to “get Flynn to get Trump”, did not change. Sidney was, however, able to bring exculpatory evidence to the public purview and lay out, especially to those following Flynn’s prosecution, the nefarious intentions of the judges, prosecutors, and enemies of President Trump.
What MAGA failed to grasp back then, until we successfully made the argument, and the facts bore it out, is that the court’s objective was NOT justice or presumption of innocence. The court’s objective, along with a list of other nefarious actors and entities, was to secure a Flynn conviction.
The system and agencies were weaponized to that end. It was a political persecution prosecution, and the only available remedy became the Pardon of Innocence under the Presidential Executive Power.
Our Pardon Flynn Now movement, founded by Pasquale Scopelliti and myself, asserted the Pardon of Innocence was the remedy which President Trump granted General Flynn on November 25, 2020.
January 6 “patriotic and peaceful protesters” were also set up.
More and more disclosed information exposes the pre-planning, entrapment, nefarious actors, and violence incited to turn self-defense into the “insurrection” narrative. The resulting prosecutions were part of that objective.
Although President Trump honored the request for Pardons for J6ers on Day 1 of his return to office, the J6 pardons were not “of Innocence”.
The same premise in granting General Flynn’s Pardon of Innocence should have applied to J6ers, eliminating or restoring individual J6 criminal record to what it was as of January 5, 2021, prior to the J6 “Fedsurrection”.
I maintain that position and highlight J6ers who have suffered because their prior J6 conviction was used against them below.
Most of those actions were self-defense and/or self-defense of others after the Capital and DC Metro Police instigated the assault on the “peaceful and patriotic” protestors or they were harmless inside tours of the Capital encouraged and facilitated my welcoming officers waving them in.
The harshest prosecutions were against those who were in a position to expose the fedcurrectionist (antifa, feds, and confidential human sources) planted in the crowd or witnessed the murders of Ashli Babbitt and Rosanne Boyland. (The recently erected plaque honoring “the brave law enforcement heroes of January 6” is a disgrace).
Yet, there was a subset of January 6ers who did stupid things they shouldn’t have done.
On principle, every J6er should have received Pardons of Innocence.
Since they did not, every J6ers now must go through the rest of their lives with the January 6 convictions on their record.
We fought for each and every January 6er, not just some. The Fedsurrectionists were pushing against pardons for the “violent offenders” so their “insurrectionists” narrative would not lose credibility. We ensured that President Trump’s team had the complete list of every January 6er’s name, charges, convictions, case numbers, locations, sentencing, time served, and other pertinent information well ahead of the January 20, 2025 Inauguration Day. Painstaking effort was made so as NOT to have any delay or detail derail January 6ers immediate release from incarceration upon receiving their pardons.
Who knows what the fate of January 6ers would have been, would still be, if we had not created and secured Day 1 pardons.
Would they still be languishing in the Gulags serving politically punitive sentences with no recourse to fight? Even with crowd fundraising for J6 Defenses, financial destruction is but one tool the corrupt courts and prosecutors (defense attorneys are often in on it too) use to destroy political adversaries.
Most J6ers were financially unable to assert a proper defense and were forced to accept pleas deals that secured the “guilty conviction” the “fedsurrectionists” sought to reinforce their 2020 Election theft. There is no truer example of the cover-up (the January 6 Fedsurrection) is worse than the crime (the 2020 Stolen Election).
Did I mention that our merry band of Pardon Patriots did not receive retainers like defense attorneys. Funds raised by our efforts went directly to January 6er legal defenses, personal expenses, or families who were also struggling financial hardships, including loss of jobs, incomes, and homes while their J6ers were held hostage.
We spent countless hours over the five+ years on podcasts, on social media platforms, at conferences, at Congress going to each Congressional office, writing articles, tracking case files, and much more to keep the J6 Pardon mission moving forward. We put the language out into the popular vernacular, even reaching President Trump, to name the persecuted prosecuted Americans as a group as January 6ers, J6ers, political prisoners, hostages. We did that.
We dedicated years to securing the Pardons, most of us at our own expense out of Patriotic Duty. We collectively invested our time, talent, and sacred honor to this task, even at great risk of having the voracious appetite of a political beast turn to devour us.
What we did not do, but the Trump pardon team did (understandably, appropriately so), was to more carefully weigh pardons based on each individual J6er’s merit and circumstance. Of necessity (and liability lkely), President Trump’s team separated out a few individuals with conditions on their commutations and pardons.
To us, the whole of the January 6ers deserved to be free.
They had suffered grave injustices enough already.
From Principle to Personal
Imagine my personal moral dilemma now, as I have been wronged by one of these very J6ers that our team and I worked so hard to release. I don’t have to image a hypothetical. It happened that a J6er, Robert Morss, post Presidential pardon, has the utter lack of moral character to take my money and throw me under the bus for his self-ambition.
Robert, as circumstances currently stand, is the epitome of “honoring the whole despite the dishonorable actions of the individual.
More on the backstory to come, but the bottom line is that money, time, and talent (approx. $2,000 – not an obscene amount but nothing to sneeze at either) that I gave to Robert for the establishment of his LeggoMan Productions film company as an investment and/or reimbursable is now being held hostage unless I sign a release statement extorting any claim to my money and work.
I find myself contemplating the shoes of the Bishop Myriel, the Bishop of Digne in Victor Hugo’s classic work, Les Miserables. The benevolent Bishop takes the newly released Jean Valjean into his home. Valjean, sentenced to serve nineteen years of hard labor, is now free. The Bishop feeds him, gives, him shelter, and admonishes him to give his new life to God.
Valjean steal from the Bishop, gets caught, and when brought before the Bishop for deserved justice, the Bishop gives underserved grace.
I’m no Bishop. If my investment and contributions are not going to be honored or appreciated, I would like my money back.
I have legitimate receipts, signed agreements, and a “Settlement Letter” denying reimbursement unless I signed off on a wider net of contributions I made to the creation and launch of LeggoMan Productions.
This could also be a lesson in taking advice from new people who don’t know relevant details. Some seek to divide, not unite, and they aren’t above lying to position themselves. And beware those who seek to promote contention and drama. Every group gets bad people, that’s why you have to keep a small core.
In the decade plus that I have been involved in the Trump/MAGA/New Media/Flynn/J6ers arena, I have had few conflicts and have built collaborative relationships with people I consider new patriot friends and family. I do not like drama. I attack issues, not individuals. If I have learned anything from my pardon advocacy, it’s that the courts are corrupt and the last place to seek remedy. The truth in this matter speaks for itself.
The Backstory
I met Robert Morss, a January 6th convicted veteran pardoned by President Trump soon after his pardon in 2021 when we were both guests on the Dan Happel podcast, Connecting the Dots. As happened often enough, David Sumrall was scheduled to be Dan’s guest that day, but had an unexpected time conflict arise, so David reached out to me and asked if I could jump in.
I could and I did.
Robert, a young enthusiastic veteran enjoying a newfound celebrity status as a pardoned J6er within the MAGA community, was amazed to hear that I was the co-creator of the Pardon Flynn Now movement and one of the core team members of the J6 Pardons.
Robert wrote a book while incarcerated. He also shared that he had written a movie and that his new mission now that he was free was to get his story made into a film.
In addition to our collaboration on the J6 Pardons, David Sumrall and I are co-founders of the 1A [First Amendment] Film Festival (1AFilmFest.com) that launched in 2024. David along with our StopHate.com team and other collaborators put out five films since January 6, 2021.
exposing the truth of January 6th, including, J6: A True Timeline documentary that landed David an interview with Tucker Carlson. Tucker said of David’s film, “everyone in America needs to see this”.
Granted the J6 defendants were shut off from what was happening in America in general and on their behalf around J6 specifically, but anybody within the MAGA and January 6 community (and beyond) knew that David Sumrall was one of the nation’s top, if not The Top, January 6 Subject Matter Experts. History books need to record that it was patriots like David in this epic time who rose to the occasion as did Thomas Paine with Common Sense, or fellow Texan Sam Houston from Remember the Alamo.
Naturally, after meeting Robert on Dan’s show, I introduced him to David. The three of us met at David’s home in Texas to collaborate on working with Robert to make his movie a reality. David also secured free housing for Robert through his J6 network.
All was going well, or so I thought. We gave Robert a premium opportunity at the 2nd Annual 1A [First Amendment] Film Festival to announce his production company (that David and I advised him to create verses trying to sell a movie script on his own). Robert stood in David’s kitchen, and I front of David as my witness, promised me he would give me $5 million dollars from his movie for my contributions as part of the LeggoMan Productions team. In Texas, a man’s word is supposed to be his bond, even if it is given with youthful exuberance.
David and I introduced Robert to Cynthia Dunbar to create a “Mission Driven Organization” corporate structure. I suggested LeggoMan Productions as the official name since it had reference to Robert’s established J6 persona. I bought the domain name, the Microsoft office suite package, and accompanied Robert to the initial meeting with Cynthia.
Robert apparently had a conflict and falling out with David. As a professed Christians, Robert and David should be able to resolve their dispute. Robert is at odds with me by extension. I reached out to Robert and the LMP team to resolve the matter. I got bullsh*t run-around back. I got the Settlement Offer in return.
I did not get my money.
My reply was that it was a dishonest document trying to call a straightforward request for reimbursement something it was not indicating nefarious motives.
Differences happen. Evolving teams and “change of direction happens”. I do not begrudge Robert success in his endeavors; in fact I pray for him. Bad behavior of one J6ers impacts the well-being of all of them and I don’t believe Robert appreciates the precarious position J6ers are in.
The enemies of J6ers, of President Trump, and of those of us on the frontlines of the MAGA activism would love nothing more that to add new scalps to harden their narrative. They would love nothing more than to cause more harm than has already been done.
As our J6 Pardon Team continues to advocate to President Trump directly, through Pardon Attorney Ed Martin, and through Congressional appeals for complete and full Pardons of Innocence and restitution for January 6ers, we appeal to those in our community to be mindful that harm done by one, harms all.
Some J6ers who have had new charges have brought consequences on themselves. Others, listed below, are ones trying to put their lives back together but find themselves subject to worse treatment because of their prior January 6 convictions.
The too long list of January 6ers who died by suicide over the weight of the federal government bearing down on them is a heartbreaking cautionary tale of the seriousness of the politically motivated persecution prosecutions. Matthew Huttle, a Pardoned J6er who was shot by a sheriff in after a routine traffic stop went wrong is amongst the most haunting.
J6er Scott Columbus
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J6er Scott Columbus Arrested, Dog Killed: Plea for Pardon of Innocence
J6er Matthew Huttle
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Pardoned January 6 rioter said ‘I’m shooting myself’ before Indiana deputy fatally shot him
Benjamin Martin
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Officially pardoned! Can someone tell our family why Ben Martin is still in US Marshal custody in McFarland Ca?? Is a corrupt CA judge really defying an Executive Order by the @POTUS? Please help bring him home! @PamBondi @HelpStopHate @Ronda4Congress @FormerFeds @CondemnedUSA
Benjamin Martin (@OneRealPOV) 650 likes · 33 replies
Edward Kelly
🚨🚨🚨🚨 Terrible! Pardoned J6er Edward Kelly, who is a US Marine and Iraq and Afghanistan war veteran, was sentenced life in prison yesterday! See the reply below for information about him. @EagleEdMartin President @realDonaldTrump @jdvance @AGPamBondi , please help him!
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Conservatism Prevents Tyranny (@SaveLibertyUS) 10 likes · 1 replies
Dillion Herrington - this is tragic and Dillion should be released — it’s a sad reality of what political accusations can do!
Dillon Herrington denied bond reduction for rape charges
In closing, I leave you with this verse and pray we resolve this today so we both can move on.
Jeremiah 17:9-10 (NIV): "The heart is deceitful above all things and beyond cure. Who can understand it? 'I the LORD search the heart and examine the mind, to reward each person according to their conduct, according to what their deeds deserve'".