President Trump issued pardons for some 1,500 defendants who participated in the siege on the U.S. Capitol four years ago, including the leader of a far-right group, fulfilling a campaign promise to exercise executive clemency on behalf of people he’s called “patriots” and “hostages.”

“We hope they come out tonight,” he said in a signing ceremony at the Oval Office on Monday evening.

The order would 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.” That means a pardon for Enrique Tarrio, the former Proud Boys chairman, who had been sentenced to 22 years in the federal penitentiary.

The proclamation posted on the White House website also included commutations for 14 people, including Stewart Rhodes, the founder of the far-right Oath Keepers group. The move paves the way for the release of Rhodes and Tarrio, who were both convicted of the rarely used charge of seditious conspiracy, along with the release of more than a thousand others.

Trump also directed the Justice Department to dismiss scores of pending cases that stem from the attack on the Capitol.

Rhodes had been sentenced to spend 18 years in prison after a judge said he presented “an ongoing threat and peril to this country … and to the very fabric of our democracy.”

Trump also issued sweeping pardons for rioters convicted of violence against police and issued sweeping pardons for scores of other defendants who participated in the siege on the U.S. Capitol four years ago, a day that upended the peaceful transfer of power to newly-elected President Joe Biden.

The hours-long assault on the Capitol on Jan. 6, 2021, injured more than 140 police officers, in one of the largest-ever mass attacks on law enforcement officers in the United States. U.S. Capitol and Washington, D.C., police persisted in defending the building, in the face of getting sprayed with harsh chemicals or beaten with flagpoles.

During the trial, the Justice Department presented the jury with thousands of messages from Rhodes and other Oath Keepers before, during and after the events of Jan. 6, including Rhodes’ comments that “we aren’t getting through this without a civil war” and “the final defense is us and our rifles.”

Tarrio was not present at the Capitol that day. But prosecutors said he encouraged the violence from afar by posting on social media: “Proud of my boys and my country” and “Don’t f****** leave.” The following day, Jan. 7, Tarrio told some of his members that he was “proud” of them.

Undoing DOJ investigation

The pardons and commutations largely undo the results of one of the most complicated investigations in the history of the Justice Department. Prosecutors and FBI agents there spent years probing the actions of people at or near the Capitol on Jan. 6, using photos, video and telephone location data to help identify potential suspects.

Federal judges in Washington, where the courthouse cafeteria boasts a view of the Capitol dome and the scene of the crime, generally imposed lighter punishments than the DOJ had requested in hundreds of Jan. 6 cases. But they also pushed back hard in their courtrooms against efforts to rewrite the history of that day, amid claims from Trump and his allies that the rioters had been unfairly targeted for prosecution.

One D.C. district court judge appointed by Trump, Carl Nichols, recently said in court that blanket pardons for the Capitol defendants would be “beyond frustrating and disappointing.”

The investigation became a priority for former Attorney General Merrick Garland, who told NPR a year after the attack on the Capitol that “every FBI office, almost every U.S. attorney’s office in the country is working on this matter. We’ve issued thousands of subpoenas, seized and examined thousands of electronic devices, examined terabytes of data, thousands of hours of videos.”

But the Justice Department’s case against Trump, for allegedly conspiring to cling to power and deprive millions of Americans of the right to have their votes count in 2020, ended with a whimper.

Special counsel Jack Smith secured a four-count felony indictment of Trump but said he was forced to abandon the case after Trump won the 2024 election, based on a longstanding DOJ view that a sitting president cannot be charged or face trial.

Smith said in court papers that the government “stands fully behind” the case it developed.

—NPR’s Tom Dreisbach contributed to this report.

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Your guide to what the 2024 US election means for Washington and the world

Donald Trump promised a “golden age of America”, as he used his inaugural address to unveil sweeping moves to undo Joe Biden’s policies and reverse a “crisis of trust” he said had engulfed the government.

The new president announced aggressive new steps to boost energy production and curb immigration as he vowed to quickly deliver on the populist and nationalist platform that swept him to victory in last year’s White House race.

Trump also spoke of his own return to the White House as both personal vindication, following two assassination attempts, and a mission for dramatic overhauls of domestic and foreign policy.

“I was saved by God to make America great again,” he said, in a speech that included echoes of his dystopian description of “American carnage” in his first inaugural address in 2017.

“For many years, a radical and corrupt establishment has extracted power and wealth from our citizens while the pillars of our society lay broken and seemingly in complete disrepair,” he said.

“We now have a government that cannot manage even a simple crisis at home, while at the same time stumbling into a continuing catalogue of catastrophic events abroad,” he said.

Trump said his return to office meant “America’s decline is over”, as he vowed to “again build the strongest military the world has ever seen”. But he also hinted at a new era of American expansion, when he said the country would take back control of the Panama Canal.

He echoed his campaign promises to end wars in Ukraine and the Middle East, saying he would be a “peacemaker”.

“We will measure our success not only by the battles we win but also by the wars that we end and, perhaps more importantly, the wars we never get into,” Trump said. “My proudest legacy will be that of a peacemaker and unifier.”

In an apparent reference to previous efforts to prosecute him, Trump vowed “never again will the immense power of the state be weaponised to persecute political opponents”. He has previously threatened to prosecute his own political foes.

Former presidents including George W Bush and Barack Obama attended the ceremony, while technology billionaires such as Elon Musk and Jeff Bezos who have recently flocked to Trump’s side had prime spots in the audience.

Trump re-enters the White House with broader support from the public and business community than when he left office in 2021, just weeks after his supporters stormed the US Capitol to try to reverse Biden’s election.

Trump now faces the daunting task of delivering on his promise to lower the cost of living for middle-class households, a pledge that was his most potent political weapon in his victorious campaign against Kamala Harris.

The new president said he would declare national emergencies on issues including immigration and energy, giving the president power to rush through new measures. As he was speaking, the White House said it was withdrawing from the Paris climate accord.

But Trump stopped short of announcing new tariffs immediately, instead planning to release a memorandum instructing government agencies to re-evaluate America’s trade relations with trading partners including China, Mexico and Canada.

The hesitance suggests his top aides are grappling with how aggressively to impose levies on America’s top trading partners. But Trump said tariffs would still be forthcoming.

“Instead of taxing our citizens to enrich other countries, we will tariff and tax foreign countries to enrich our citizens,” he said.

Before he spoke, the dollar dropped about 1 per cent against a basket of other currencies in US morning trading, putting it on course for its biggest daily decline in more than five months.

Trump’s return to the White House has unnerved some of America’s closest allies who fear a further lurch towards protectionism and new turn towards isolationism in Washington.

But staunch conservative world leaders have cheered his election victory. Javier Milei, the president of Argentina, and Giorgia Meloni, Italy’s prime minister, were among leaders attending his inauguration.