The president-elect has pledged to pardon many Jan. 6 defendants during his first hour in office on Jan. 20, wiping away their punishment with the stroke of a pen and erasing much of the legal system’s effort to address an unprecedented assault on the seat of American democracy. Two-thirds of Americans oppose pardons for people convicted of crimes in the riot, according to a Washington Post-University of Maryland poll conducted in early December, although strong majorities of Republicans (60 percent) and Trump voters (69 percent) approve of them.
