President Donald Trump holds up an executive order commuting sentences for people convicted of Jan. 6 offenses in the Oval Office of the White House, Monday, Jan. 20, 2025. (AP Photo/Evan Vucci)
Pat Sullivan / Pat Sullivan
Federal prosecutors charged more than 40 Georgians with participating in the Jan. 6 insurrection at the U.S. Capitol, including more than a dozen accused of assaulting police officers or other acts of violence.
President Donald Trump granted clemency to all of them.
Six Georgia defendants had already been convicted at trial and now have been granted “full, complete and unconditional” pardons, including 23-year-old Jake Maxwell.
“I’m just over 24 hours from cutting off the ankle bracelet,” Maxwell told WABE last Thursday. “I can go anywhere I want and not have to ask permission anymore. It’s an amazing feeling. My brain is like, re-wired.”
Maxwell lives north of Atlanta, near Lake Lanier.
On Jan. 6, 2021, he was in Washington, D.C., to support Trump and protest the election result. After attending Trump’s rally at the Ellipse, where the president encouraged supporters to march to the Capitol, prosecutors say Maxwell was part of a crowd that breached police lines and pushed its way to the Inaugural Stage and Upper West Terrace of the U.S. Capitol.
Though he did not go inside, prosecutors say Maxwell stayed at the Capitol for several hours as the violence unfolded around him. Citing body camera footage, prosecutors accused Maxwell of assaulting two police officers. He denied that allegation and disputed prosecutors’ interpretation of the footage.
In February 2022, prosecutors charged Maxwell on seven counts. He pleaded not guilty to all of them at trial. In November 2023, U.S. District Judge Richard Leon ultimately found Maxwell not guilty on four of the counts – all charges focused on assaulting or impeding officers and engaging in physical violence.
But the judge did find Maxwell guilty on three counts, including Civil Disorder and Disorderly or Disruptive Conduct in a Restricted Building or Grounds.
Prosecutors say this image shows Jake Maxwell in the crowd outside the U.S. Capitol on Jan. 6, 2021. (U.S. Department of Justice)
Roughly two weeks after Trump won a second term, Leon sentenced Maxwell to 18 months probation, including six months home detention and $1,500 in restitution for repairs to the Capitol.
Maxwell said he felt the judge had been fair.
“I prayed many prayers throughout this process,” Maxwell said. “One of them was for a fair trial and I told him that I believe he gave me that opportunity.”
Maxwell was serving his sentence at home in Georgia, watching TV with family as Trump announced the pardons. A day later, he was able to remove his ankle monitor, just two months into his sentence.
‘I think about what is the message this sends’
For former federal prosecutor Alexis Loeb, Trump’s blanket pardons have been disappointing. Until recently, Loeb served as a deputy chief of the section in the U.S. Attorney’s Office for the District of Columbia focused on Jan. 6 cases.
Loeb did not work on Maxwell’s case but did supervise the prosecution against a defendant from Savannah, who, until Trump pardoned him, had a sentencing scheduled next month.
“The government detailed in its filings and in the proof at trial what these defendants did and no matter whether they served a sentence or not, that is something that I hope will eventually be the definitive truth about what happened that day,” she said.
Most defendants pleaded guilty to at least some charges, and prosecutors won guilty verdicts in nearly every case that went to trial, according to an NPR database of the more than 1,500 Jan. 6 cases.
“My main concern is for the victims, particularly the police officers who were brutally attacked that day and what it means for them to have the people who attacked them walk free,” Loeb said.
The U.S. Department of Justice estimated more than 140 police officers were injured in the attack. A bipartisan U.S. Senate report concluded that seven people, including law enforcement officers and protesters, died in connection with the Jan. 6 riot. Loeb said an important aim of her team’s more than three-year effort was to deter an event like Jan. 6 from happening again.
“I think about what is the message this sends about political violence and respecting the elections and upholding the peaceful transfer of power going forward,” Loeb said.
Gov. Brian Kemp also criticized the pardons, breaking with many other Georgia Republicans.
“Anyone who harms a law enforcement officer should be held fully accountable for their actions, and presidents should not issue blanket, preemptive pardons for their family members in the final minutes of their tenure,” Kemp wrote in a statement to reporters.
But in Washington, Republican Rep. Barry Loudermilk of Georgia has been tasked with continuing Congressional Republicans’ reinvestigation of Jan. 6. Loudermilk and his colleagues have moved to reframe the narrative of Jan. 6 and its fallout as outlined by the U.S. House Select Committee on the Jan. 6 Attack, which produced days of televised hearings before disbanding in 2023.
Loudermilk’s GOP-led panel released an initial report last year that deflected responsibility for the attack from Trump, calling for former Rep. Liz Cheney, an outspoken Trump critic, to face criminal charges.
As for Maxwell, he hopes Trump takes on a justice system he now says unfairly targeted him and others.
“I absolutely hope that we can get our Department of Justice under control,” Maxwell said. “It has been a travesty, from what all of our families had to go through. It’s pretty amazing to have all of my rights back, at 23 years old, believing I would be a convicted felon for the rest of my life.”
Trump has said he wants the Justice Department to retaliate against his political opponents.
In a memo ahead of sentencing last fall, Maxwell’s lawyers told the judge their client “accepted responsibility for his actions” and “regretted” being at the Capitol on Jan. 6.
But now Maxwell says, “I am who I am today because of everything that’s ever led up to this point. So, I wouldn’t do anything different. Because I’m 100% innocent.”
While Maxwell will no longer carry the status of a convicted felon as a result of Trump’s pardon, the evidence presented by prosecutors will remain in the public record.
