More than 50 Donald Trump supporters from Illinois will get their federal rap sheets wiped clean after the new president’s Day 1 signing of about 1,500 pardons related to the notorious riot at the U.S. Capitol on Jan. 6, 2021.
Dozens of Trump’s supporters from the Chicago area and other parts of the state ended up in the dragnet during the U.S. Justice Department’s enormous, four-year investigation into the failed effort to overturn Trump’s defeat in the 2020 election.
A Chicago Sun-Times review of federal court records found 43 of the 53 defendants from Illinois had been convicted and sentenced in cases stemming from the Capitol insurrection by the time Trump took office Monday and carried out his campaign promise to help people he described as “hostages” of politicized federal law-enforcement.
The lawyer for one of the defendants — former Chicago Police Officer Karol J. Chwiesiuk — welcomed Trump’s decision as “the right thing to do.”
“It was a witch hunt,” the lawyer, Nishay Sanan of Chicago, said of the Jan. 6 cases. “This was the Democrats’ attempt to go after Trump and his supporters. Why didn’t anyone go after the people who burned down Portland and Minneapolis? Because they’re all Democrats.”
Kevin J. Lyons of Inverness — who received one of the longest prison sentences among the Illinois defendants, at 51 months — replied to a request for comment from a reporter Monday evening with a profanity.
According to court records, Lyons wrongly entered the Capitol and took a photo of a plaque outside then-House Speaker Nancy Pelosi’s office. He was found guilty of all the charges lodged against him, although a judge later tossed a count of obstruction of an official proceeding following the U.S. Supreme Court ruling in Fischer v. United States.
Lyons was released from prison last August, records show.
“Go f— yourself,” he told a reporter via text message.
Trump commuted the sentences of 14 Jan. 6 defendants, including Enrique Tarrio, the leader of the far-right Proud Boys militia, and Stewart Rhodes, founder of the anti-government Oath Keepers.
According to the “proclamation” on Monday from Trump, he had acted to “grant a full, complete and unconditional pardon to all other individuals convicted of offenses related to events that occurred at or near the United States Capitol on January 6, 2021.” And he also ordered his new attorney general to drop all pending cases.
The Jan. 6 convicts from Illinois came from all over the state and also included a retired Chicago firefighter and a onetime CEO from the northwest suburbs.
Chwiesiuk’s lawyer, Sanan, said he hoped his client now could be reinstated as a Chicago cop and he bemoaned how then-Mayor Lori Lightfoot and police leadership in the Democratic-dominated city “made a mockery of Karol” when he was arrested and charged for going to Washington four years ago.
Sanan also represented other Jan. 6 defendants from Illinois, including Chwiesiuk’s sister and Robert Giacchetti of Crystal Lake. Giacchetti used his body to push against a law enforcement officer, then broke equipment owned by the Associated Press and pushed over a camera and tripod, striking a journalist.
He pleaded guilty to a count of assaulting, resisting or impeding certain officers. His sentencing had been set for June.
In another highly publicized case, retired firefighter Joseph Pavlik joined rioters who spent more than two hours assaulting officers in an area of the Capitol known as “The Tunnel” and was sentenced to two months in prison.
The first person from the Chicago area who faced federal charges was former CEO Bradley Rukstales of Inverness, who pleaded guilty to parading, demonstrating or picketing inside a Capitol building and was sentenced to 30 days in jail. Rukstales admitted that he threw a chair in the direction of officers who had previously retreated and formed a defensive line.
Rukstales did not return messages but on X on Sunday, he posted that a presidential pardon would represent a “righteous gift” to him, and recently he expressed hope that he and other “J6ers” would receive reparations.
Tom Schuba is a reporter and editor covering criminal justice issues for the Sun-Times. Dan Mihalopoulos is an investigative reporter for WBEZ. Jon Seidel writes about federal courts and legal affairs for the Sun-Times.
