How Trump’s January 6 Pardons Hijacked History

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The Center for Investigative Reporting and PRX

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4.7 • 8K Ratings

🗓️ 5 March 2025

⏱️ 36 minutes

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Summary

One of President Donald Trump’s first actions as president was simple and sweeping: pardoning 1,500 people convicted of offenses related to the January 6, 2021, attack on the US Capitol. That single executive action undid years of work and investigation by the FBI, US prosecutors, and one person in particular: Tim Heaphy.Heaphy was the lead investigative counsel for the House Select Committee to Investigate the January 6th Attack on the United States Capitol, and he’s arguably done more than anyone to piece together what happened that day. His work helped inform related cases that were brought against rioters, Trump administration officials, and even Trump himself.In the first episode of More To The Story, Heaphy talks to host Al Letson about how Trump swept aside those consequences; the overlap between the January 6 attack and the 2017 Unite the Right rally in Charlottesville, Virginia; and what Trump’s pardons mean for the country going forward.

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More To The Story team:

Kara McGuirk-Allison, Josh Sanburn, Al Letson

Taki Telonidis, Brett Myers, Fernando Arruda, Jim Briggs, Nikki Frick, Kate Howard, Artis Curiskis

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Transcript

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0:00.0	We stormed a capital.
0:05.0	We're doing it.
0:06.0	On house!
0:08.0	This week, the January 6th committee finally released its full 845-page report.
0:16.0	I was the general counsel at UVA and I took a leave of absence to go run the January 6th investigation.
0:26.3	So this is January 6th. These are the hostages. Approximately 1,500 for a pardon.
0:34.8	Yes.
0:35.3	Full pardon.
0:37.9	Not during our investigation or during the time I wrote this book, did I think that I would be getting questions about a mass pardon of those defendants and an attempt to change the narrative about January 6th.
0:56.0	Tim Hafey led the investigation into the January 6th insurrection at the Capitol,
1:01.5	and it wasn't without personal cost.
1:03.9	Coming up, I talk with Tim about investigating political violence
1:07.7	and what it feels like when your contribution to history is being rewritten.
1:18.2	This is the first episode of our new show. More to the story with me, Outlets, and I don't need to tell you.
1:28.8	2025 has been a year, and it's only March, right?
1:32.6	But we made it this far, and from now on, we're going to take it one week at a time.
1:37.4	And I'm going to introduce you to people who can help us pierce through the noise and make sense of what's happening around us.
1:55.8	From the moment he took office, President Trump has set the tone for his second term.
2:02.2	One of the first things he did was grant clemency to 1,500 insurrectionists who stormed the Capitol on January 6th, basically reversing years of work by the FBI to identify the
2:08.8	attackers and hold them to account.
2:11.7	Tim Hafey has spent years investigating what happened that day.
2:15.5	Tim was the chief investigative counsel for the House
	...

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