BALTIMORE — In less than a month's time, President-Elect Donald Trump returns to the White House for a second term promising to wipe the slate clean for January 6 defendants.
In the last four years, the Department of Justice has charged more than 1,500 accused rioters with 2/3rds receiving prison sentences for their role in the breach of the U.S. Capitol and its grounds during a session of Congress to certify the 2020 election results.
There have been 29 defendants from Maryland charged, 10 have been sentenced, six are still incarcerated and two are still awaiting trial.
Adam Obest, who now lives in Frederick County, is one of those defendants.
"I didn't like all the rhetoric about January 6th. It was horrible, and I saw the videos and I saw the things that happened I thought, that is really bad," Obest said.
He was living in Harford County at the time when he traveled with family and friends to the U.S. Capitol to attend President Trump's Stop the Steal rally.
Obest agreed to sit down with WMAR-2 News in his first television interview to set the record straight on who he is as a person.
"People that were there that day were not domestic terrorists, were not problems to this country, insurrectionists. Most people love this country with all of their heart, will do anything for it, lot of veterans, a lot of Christians and people that would do anything to keep this country free and to be what it is, a shining city on a hill and I think I’m one of them and people need to know that," Obest said.
He says he approached the police line with his wife trying to get a better view of what was happening when an officer told them to get back and pepper sprayed them. He says chaos then ensued.
Obest was also carrying an American flag and investigators reported he used it in a physical clash with Capitol police, among other accusations of violence including attempting to take an officer's baton and throwing a smoke grenade towards law enforcement.
He insists most was reactionary, and not with bad intention. He admits he threw the smoke grenade, but says he didn't realize it was in the direction of law enforcement and only did so to get it away from him and others.
"I was peaceful, I believe. Other than the things that I made mistakes on, should have turned around. Should have [known] I was in a danger zone, should have turned around. And that's the bottom line," he said. "Lost my job, family things, hurt my kids. Things have been really hard, you know?”
In December, a judge sentenced him to 18 months in prison and 36 months of supervised release after finding him guilty of two of the eight original felony charges: one count of civil disorder and one count of assaulting, resisting, or impeding a law enforcement officer.
Prosecutors had asked the court for a sentence of 51 months.
Trump has maintained since the campaign trail that he will pardon January 6 defendants on day one in office. Obest hopes that he will be forgiven before he has to report to prison, which he is still waiting to hear when that will be.
"I believe he will do what is right. I hope and pray that he does. I just keep praying," Obest said. “President Trump has endured a lot for this country. I think he understands more than anybody what it feels like to be targeted, lied about, smeared.”
"[Clemency is] pretty much an unchecked power of the president," law professor at the University of St.Thomas in Minnesota Mark Osler said. "That’s one of the reasons it’s so controversial is because it’s so broad.”
Osler founded the first federal clemency clinic in the United States. He anticipates that there won't be broad pardons issued come January 20.
“I think what we’re likely to see is that on that first day, he will grant some. It could be 20 to 50, it could be a couple hundred, but it is going to be people who are picked out of that group to go first and that may be all that he ends up doing as well," Osler said.
The timing isn't unusual, before President Clinton, Osler says that presidents would grant clemency throughout their term and even on their first day, like the late President Jimmy
Carter who pardoned Vietnam-era draft dodgers then.
Trump's plans, if followed through, will hold a historical significance of their own.
“The first use of clemency by George Washington was for insurrectionists, to people who were leaders of the Whiskey Rebellion. We’ve seen it since then used for people who've committed insurrection," Osler explained. "What’s different here is that in those previous experiences with pardoning insurrectionists, it was in the interest of national reconciliation and done by someone that was opposed to that insurrection in the first place. Here we’ve got a President who is pardoning insurrectionists who were doing it in support of his interests."
Obest strongly believes that the majority of Americans at the Capitol that day did not have intentions to overthrow the government, including himself as a former government employee.
"The biggest lie is that we, people like me, were a threat to this country. It's a lie. I just hope people realize that," he said.
Though he doesn't agree with everything that happened four years ago, he says he hopes the incoming president will at the very least reduce, or commute, everyone's sentences.
Osler worries for the current use of the constitutional power under both President Biden and Trump's plan for January 6 defendants, is that the bid from thousands who have applied for and are waiting on clemency will be lost.
“I think the danger is we’ll see the decay of clemency being used in a way that people broadly see as moraled and principled," Osler said.
