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January 23, 2025 10:10 AM UTC

"Law And Order" Gabe Evans Cops Out After Trump's Blanket January 6th Pardons

  • 11 Comments
  • by: Colorado Pols

One Colorado Republican in Congress is criticizing President Trump for pardoning J6 rioters who violently attacked police. It’s not former police officer Rep. Gabe Evans. He’s still in line with Trump. It’s fellow freshman Rep. Jeff Hurd. #copolitics

[image or embed]

— Kyle Clark (@kylec.bsky.social) January 22, 2025 at 10:11 PM

THURSDAY UPDATE: Rep. Gabe Evans’ evasion on the subject of President Donald Trump’s pardons of January 6th rioters convicted of assaulting police officers is going over poorly, with scrutiny from 9NEWS’ Kyle Clark (above) and an interview this morning on KOA News radio in which host Marty Lenz commendably hit the vulnerable freshman representative with hard questions. Evans’ answers were…painfully bad:

MARTY LENZ: Congressman, it has been your lead card, you’ve mentioned often about how you’ve been a police officer. I want to get your thoughts then on President Trump pardoning the J6 folks. Your thoughts on that as somebody who you back to blue and you’re somebody who’s worked in law enforcement.

GABE EVANS: Yeah. Again, I think I think the American people sent us here to be forward looking and to solve the big problems like securing the border and getting cost of living under control. But since you brought that one up, I think, you know, I’ve always been very consistent in saying you shouldn’t assault law enforcement officers. I said that in the spring of 2020 when we experienced some of the most violent riots in the country around the state capitol in downtown Denver. And you never heard a peep from the other side of the aisle about assaulting police officers in that particular context. And so I’ve been very consistent on that messaging that, no, we should not assault police officers.

MARTY LENZ: But do you agree with the pardons then, or should there have been a more serious, deeper look at them versus sweeping ones?

GABE EVANS: Well, like I said, I don’t think that we should assault police officers. And I also think that, again, the American people want us to be able to focus on looking forward, [Pols emphasis] to be able to solve the big issues like border security, fixing the affordability, fixing the price of eggs, fixing our energy economy so that we actually have the ability to live and work in Colorado’s eighth Congressional District, Colorado and America.

A pivot that falls flatter than Tonya Harding, folks. Gabe Evans just forfeited his “law and order” credentials to defend Donald Trump.

Don’t take our word for it. Ask the U.S. Capitol Police what they think.

—–

UPDATE: Colorado Public Radio’s Caitlyn Kim gets a belated cop-out comment from Rep. Gabe Evans on Trump’s blanket January 6th pardons, saying “we need to look forward” and that some of those convicted of violence on January 6th were “overcharged.”

Asked #CO08 Rep Gabe Evans if Trump should have pardoned people convicted of violence against law enforcement. Says he doesn’t support violence against law enforcement. Added he thinks DOJ over charged some Jan 6 rioters and that we need to look forward. #copolitics

— Caitlyn Kim (@caitlynkim.bsky.social) January 22, 2025 at 11:54 AM

—–

January 6th, 2021.

The executive order signed by President Donald Trump on his first evening back in the Oval Office pardoning almost all of the convicts and defendants who caught cases in the January 6th, 2021 insurrection at the U.S. Capitol attempting to disrupt the certification of Joe Biden’s victory in the 2020 presidential election, took even many of his closest supporters by surprise–including Vice President J.D. Vance who suggested before the inauguration that violent offenders from that day should not be pardoned. As NBC News reports, Trump’s pardoning of individuals convicted of smashing their way into the building and assaulting Capitol police is dividing Republicans into two camps: those willing to about-face from their previously professed support for law enforcement to excuse Trump, and those who can’t bring themselves to do it:

President Donald Trump’s decision to pardon virtually every person charged in connection with the Jan. 6, 2021, attack on the U.S. Capitol was made at the last minute as the inauguration approached — and it surprised some of his supporters and aides…

The pardons surprised many in large part because Trump and Vice President JD Vance had signaled recently that the president would take a more surgical approach.

“I don’t know what the staff work was like on that,” former House Speaker Newt Gingrich, R-Ga., a Trump ally who attended Monday’s inauguration, said in an interview.

Drawing a line that would have denied pardons to people who attacked police “is a more defensible position and easier to support,” Gingrich added. “You have to wonder whether you really want to put people back on the street who haven’t paid their dues for having done those things.” [Pols emphasis]

Among Colorado’s Republican congressional delegation, as 9NEWS’ Marshall Zelinger reports, the first to respond to inquiries about Trump’s expansive January 6th pardons was unsurprisingly our state’s leading MAGA cheerleader Rep. Lauren Boebert, who wholeheartedly supported pardoning “everyone” and was loaded with whataboutism over Biden’s own exiting pardons of family and potential targets of political retaliation threatened by Trump.

Boebert’s full-throated backing of Trump’s blanket pardons for violent January 6th offenders stands in stark contrast to the opinion of her successor in Colorado’s Third District, Rep. Jeff Hurd, who as Colorado Public Radio’s Caitlyn Kim reports is not willing to normalize what happened on January 6th:

Freshman GOP Rep. Jeff Hurd of Grand Junction said he was “deeply disappointed” in the pardons “for those who assaulted law enforcement officers and for those who fought to stop the constitutional certification of the 2020 election.”

“I’m a rule of law Republican,” said Hurd. “January 6 was a dark day in American history, and it was an assault on our republic and the peaceful transfer of power.” [Pols emphasis]

Hurd’s refusal to go along with Trump’s whitewashing of the January 6th, 2021 insurrection is commendable given the major political risks that come with disagreeing with Trump, but it’s also a minimum standard that was generally assumed before Trump returned to office. Before Trump actually pardoned January 6th rioters convicted of violence against police officers, very few Republicans outside a small fringe that includes Rep. Boebert and her frenemy-in-Christ Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene were willing to publicly call for this action. With the stroke of a pen, Trump has legitimized political violence and property destruction, and morally compromised every other Republican’s grandstands against civil rights protests in 2020 regularly invoked to downplay January 6th.

Republican Reps. Jeff Crank and Gabe Evans, himself a former police officer, [Pols emphasis] did not respond to multiple requests…

Rep. Jeff Crank has shamelessly remade himself from one of the state’s leading “Never Trumpers” to a devoted MAGA sycophant, so we don’t expect to hear much from him. Rep. Gabe Evans, however, is much more exposed on this issue as a former police officer who ran for office on both a “law and order” and ardently pro-Trump platform in the state’s most competitive congressional district. Readers will recall Evans’ own “whataboutism” during the GOP’s short-lived attempt last year to impeach Secretary of State Jena Griswold, asking a U.S. Capitol Police officer who was present on January 6th whether civil rights protesters in 2020 were equally worthy of condemnation.

Now Gabe Evans gets to explain why Trump supporters convicted of assaulting police officers on January 6th deserved a pardon. It’s a question central to Evans’ own political identity, and he will not be able to hide from it for long.

Comments

11 thoughts on ““Law And Order” Gabe Evans Cops Out After Trump’s Blanket January 6th Pardons

  1. Perhaps Rep. CopWaffle can explain his position to this Law Enforcement officer who is now in fear for his life from these pardoned felons….Back The Blue!

    ‘Betrayed': Former DC officer seeks protection after Jan. 6 attackers pardoned

    "The fact that I have to do this, to try to afford my family some degree of protection, is outrageous," said former DC police officer Mike Fanone, who was beaten and shocked with a stun gun as rioters stormed the U.S. Capitol on Jan. 6, 2021

    https://www.nbcwashington.com/news/local/betrayed-former-dc-officer-seeks-protection-after-jan-6-attackers-pardoned/3821489/

     

    1. I suspect he was arrested under a warrant related to a charge of felon-in-possession, i.e., a convicted felon in possession of a firearm (or ammunition), which is a federal crime under 18 USC section 922(g)(1).  But that section is currently under challenge in many cases throughout the country, with defendants claiming that the section is unconstitutional under the Second Amendment as applied to them under the Supreme Court's Bruen decision.  The Supreme Court is going to have to weigh in on this, as there is likely to be a circuit split soon and there are lots of pending cases.  The Third Circuit just held the section unconstituional as applied to a non-violent criminal who sued the US claiming his Second Amendment rights were violated.  There is a currently pending case in the Tenth Circuit (Vincent) that is back on remand after being vacated by the Supreme Court after its Rahimi decision at the end of last term.  Stay tuned. 

      1. I don't know if what I'm about to ask is a good question or not, spaceman, so I hope you'll humor me here:

        I am reasonably and unfortunately certain that many modern judges and courts, including SCOTUS, will rule in support of guns and gun users if there is even a whiff of relevance to 2A or precedent cases. But is there any relevance whatsoever to the part of the story that I quoted, and I'll restate it below? Or do we just say the magic word "Bruen" and let the guy out to maybe dust some cops off?

        A federal judge ordered Ball detained in May of 2023 after determining he posed a serious ongoing danger to the general public if released, and to members of law enforcement in particular.

        This guy in particular is a multi-time felon and according to a judge a serious threat to safety. Please tell me the legal system still has some juice here!

        1. You've hit the nail on the head, and I welcome your question.  The Rahimi case, decided at the end of the last term, upheld a restriction on firearm possession applied to someone under a protection order (i.e., a domestic violence restraining order under the facts of the case).  The Supreme Court concluded that the statute at issue (18 USC 922(g)(8)) as applied to the facts of the case fit within the Nation's tradition of firearm regulations (two specific types of historical regulations surety laws and so-called "going armed" laws) targeted at preventing individuals who threatened physical harm to others from misusing firearms.  (That's the analysis required under the Supreme Court's Bruen case from a few years ago).  Rahimi was an 8-1 decision, with only Justice Thomas dissenting.  So with specific findings made as to that felon, I suspect the restriction would be upheld.  It's my view that what is likely to happen generally is that courts are going to have to make specific findings that an individual poses a danger to the public (or to themselves) but that if the courts do so, then restricting that individuals right to possess a firearm is likely to be upheld.  On the flip side, if such findings are not made, then the mere possession of a firearm by a felon, without a finding that the felon's possession would create a risk to public safety, is likely to be struck down as violating the Second Amendment.  But the law is definitely unsettled and in flux right now.  And it is further uncertain because of the change in administrations.  The trump administration is much less likely to push firearm restrictions in court than the Biden admin. did.  

           

    2. Charges resulting from prior felonies (one in 2017) and possession of a weapon when he was arrested for his J6 activities in 2023. 

      Don't know why he wasn't charged immediately after his arrest on the "felon in possession" violation.

  2. This is a weird tactic for Evans because it does him no favors. Even Hurd who represents a Republican-leaning area had at least mild criticism. Evans just completely sidestepped it, which won’t convince the mostly independent electorate he represents that’s he’s a “moderate”. Hurd and Evans should consider switching districts, Hurd seems to be the actual moderate while Evans is the MAGA-lite Republican desperately pretending to be bipartisan and centrist. Evans already has a target on him. If Evans even gets re-elected, it’ll be for the same reasons he won in 2024, low turnout and begging for the third-party right-wing candidates to step aside. But that can only get you so far unless you plan to actually be a moderate but he’s already failing at that.

    1. I do not expect low turnout in ' 24. By then I expect enough MAGAts to be walking around with chewed-up faces that even they will be looking for a change. 

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