2024 Could Be A ‘Get Out Of Jail Free’ Election For Donald Trump’s Jan. 6 Rioters

WASHINGTON — If Donald Trump wins in November, hundreds of people in prison for rioting at the U.S. Capitol on Jan. 6, 2021, could be set free before their sentences are up.

The former president has repeatedly said he would consider pardoning his supporters for their actions that day, and at least some of them have taken the idea to heart.

On Monday, hours after he had been sentenced to 20 years in prison for violently assaulting police with a flagpole and other makeshift weapons at the Capitol, David Dempsey had a message for the antifa types he imagined cheering his punishment.

“Don’t celebrate too hard, man, because that sentence is only gonna last like six months,” Dempsey said, speaking via phone from inside the D.C. Jail to a small group of Trump supporters that keeps a nightly vigil outside .

“And then we’re going to have four years of dragging our nuts across your forehead,” Dempsey said, “because Donald Trump is gonna win.”

Nearly 1,500 people have been charged with crimes for their actions at the Capitol, where they had marched, with Trump’s encouragement, to disrupt by physical force the congressional certification of Trump’s loss in the 2020 election.

Almost all of the criminal defendants have been charged with entering restricted grounds and more than 500 with assaulting or interfering with police, according to the Justice Department . Nearly 900 people have pleaded guilty to various crimes while 186 were found guilty at contested trials. More than 560 have been sentenced to prison.

How many might get out early if Trump wins? The former president said last year in May he would likely pardon “a large portion” of his mob, but not all of them. “I can’t say for every single one, because a couple of them,