Hindsight being 20-20, as it is, Trumps sweeping pardons of the J6 rioters, including the violent ones who attacked law enforcement officers, was completely predictable. It completes the circle of denial… of his own criminal activity, and that of everyone else involved. Wipes out the guilty verdicts and the sentences and the ongoing and not yet initiated prosecutions. (Note, however, that it does not wipe out the convictions… for what that’s worth.) We need not speak of who won the 2020 election again. (But it was a stolen election.)
And it was predictable that it would be done day 1. The pardon power is self-executing and immediate. It cannot be challenged. Shock and awe. And I don’t believe Biden’s pre-emptive pardons did anything to make it worse. This is how is was always going to be.