There were 14 Missourians, me among them, who were negatively impacted recently by President Donald Trump’s pardons to the approximately 1,500 individuals who stormed the Capitol on Jan. 6, 2021. We all saw a demonstration in real time about just what kind of people are part of that group that has now been set free to continue spreading fear on behalf of this president.
Trump granted “full, complete and unconditional” clemency to the Jan. 6 rioters. Among them was Henry "Enrique" Tarrio. From 2018 to 2021, Tarrio was the head of the Proud Boys, a far-right, neo-fascist organization which promotes political violence.
Tarrio had been convicted and sentenced to 22 years in federal prison for seditious conspiracy and other charges related to Jan. 6. That was until this past Jan. 20, when Trump, on his first day back in office, pardoned him.
This past weekend, I joined more than 1,150 patriots who traveled to Washington, D.C., for the all-volunteer, fifth annual Principles First Summit to listen, debate and learn how to communicate the Principles First’s set of 15 principles.
Principles First founder Heath Mayo describes the grassroots movement like this: “Principles define who we are, what we believe in, and the type of country we’ll become. That’s why we choose to put them first — before politicians and before party.”
Many call Principles First an “Anti-Trump” group. While many are “Never Trump” conservatives, many others have recently joined because they worry about the state of our democracy and the direction that the country is moving in. Principles First offers a positive way forward promoting principles that include honesty, integrity and respect for the supremacy of the Constitution and the rule of law.
Our meeting was interrupted twice — once on Saturday, and once, and more dangerously, on Sunday.
On Saturday, Tarrio turned up at the conference site and confronted former Metropolitan Police Department of the District of Columbia officer Michael Fanone and former U.S. Capitol Police Sgt. Harry Dunn, both of whom defended the Capitol during the Jan. 6 attack.
Tarrio called Fanone and Dunn “cowards” and told them to “keep walking,” as he and a group of his supporters filmed and followed them through the hotel.
Shortly after noon on Sunday, organizers of the Principles First Summit received an email from someone claiming to have planted two pipe bombs at the JW Marriott Hotel in D.C., as well as at the home of former national security adviser John Bolton and at Fanone’s mother’s house.
The email also threatened many of the summit’s speakers, saying they “all deserved to die.”
The threat was sent from an untraceable address with the signature “Enrique T.” It was presented as a way “To honor the J6 hostages recently released by Emperor Trump.”
Tarrio denies any involvement. There is an active and ongoing investigation by law enforcement into the bomb threat.
Yes, the terrorists succeeded in instilling fear, at least in me. As the brave men, women and dogs of the Metropolitan Police Department swept the hotel for the pipe bombs, all I could think of was wanting to see my family again.
But they did not win. Once we got the “All clear,” it was my honor and pleasure to welcome and introduce our next set of speakers.
For the record, I am a member of Principles First Board of Directors. As noted above, this is an all-volunteer organization. I do not receive any compensation for my involvement.
While you may or may not agree with the positions shared, it was our right under the First Amendment of the Constitution to gather and share freely. Every American has this privilege, and they should not be terrorized for exercising this right to free speech. There were attendees who traveled on their own dime to attend from 44 states across the country.
I am not naive enough to believe that the FBI, under the direction of Kash Patel and newly appointed Deputy FBI Director Dan Bongino, will adequately investigate the events that occurred.
Nor am I under any illusion that the Trump supporters among Missouri’s U.S. Congressional delegation will stand up for the 14 of us from their state and condemn the behavior aimed at their constituents.
I am deeply saddened to say that this is where and how we live now in America. Only when voters stand up and say, No, this is not who we are, will things change for the better.
From Trump’s pardoned fans, intimidation, and bomb threats was first published in The St. Louis Post-Dispatch and was republished with permission.
Lynn Schmidt is a Post-Dispatch columnist and Editorial Board member. SchmidtOpinions@gmail.com.
Eric Trump, the newly appointed ALT5 board director of World Liberty Financial, walks outside of the NASDAQ in Times Square as they mark the $1.5- billion partnership between World Liberty Financial and ALT5 Sigma with the ringing of the NASDAQ opening bell, on Aug. 13, 2025, in New York City.
Why does the Trump family always get a pass?
Deputy Attorney General Todd Blanche joined ABC’s “This Week” on Sunday to defend or explain a lot of controversies for the Trump administration: the Epstein files release, the events in Minneapolis, etc. He was also asked about possible conflicts of interest between President Trump’s family business and his job. Specifically, Blanche was asked about a very sketchy deal Trump’s son Eric signed with the UAE’s national security adviser, Sheikh Tahnoon.
Shortly before Trump was inaugurated in early 2025, Tahnoon invested $500 million in the Trump-owned World Liberty, a then newly launched cryptocurrency outfit. A few months later, UAE was granted permission to purchase sensitive American AI chips. According to the Wall Street Journal, which broke the story, “the deal marks something unprecedented in American politics: a foreign government official taking a major ownership stake in an incoming U.S. president’s company.”
“How do you respond to those who say this is a serious conflict of interest?” ABC host George Stephanopoulos asked.
“I love it when these papers talk about something being unprecedented or never happening before,” Blanche replied, “as if the Biden family and the Biden administration didn’t do exactly the same thing, and they were just in office.”
Blanche went on to boast about how the president is utterly transparent regarding his questionable business practices: “I don’t have a comment on it beyond Trump has been completely transparent when his family travels for business reasons. They don’t do so in secret. We don’t learn about it when we find a laptop a few years later. We learn about it when it’s happening.”
Sadly, Stephanopoulos didn’t offer the obvious response, which may have gone something like this: “OK, but the president and countless leading Republicans insisted that President Biden was the head of what they dubbed ‘the Biden Crime family’ and insisted his business dealings were corrupt, and indeed that his corruption merited impeachment. So how is being ‘transparent’ about similar corruption a defense?”
Now, I should be clear that I do think the Biden family’s business dealings were corrupt, whether or not laws were broken. Others disagree. I also think Trump’s business dealings appear to be worse in many ways than even what Biden was alleged to have done. But none of that is relevant. The standard set by Trump and Republicans is the relevant political standard, and by the deputy attorney general’s own account, the Trump administration is doing “exactly the same thing,” just more openly.
Since when is being more transparent about wrongdoing a defense? Try telling a cop or judge, “Yes, I robbed that bank. I’ve been completely transparent about that. So, what’s the big deal?”
This is just a small example of the broader dysfunction in the way we talk about politics.
Americans have a special hatred for hypocrisy. I think it goes back to the founding era. As Alexis de Tocqueville observed in “Democracy In America,” the old world had a different way of dealing with the moral shortcomings of leaders. Rank had its privileges. Nobles, never mind kings, were entitled to behave in ways that were forbidden to the little people.
In America, titles of nobility were banned in the Constitution and in our democratic culture. In a society built on notions of equality (the obvious exceptions of Black people, women, Native Americans notwithstanding) no one has access to special carve-outs or exemptions as to what is right and wrong. Claiming them, particularly in secret, feels like a betrayal against the whole idea of equality.
The problem in the modern era is that elites — of all ideological stripes — have violated that bargain. The result isn’t that we’ve abandoned any notion of right and wrong. Instead, by elevating hypocrisy to the greatest of sins, we end up weaponizing the principles, using them as a cudgel against the other side but not against our own.
Pick an issue: violent rhetoric by politicians, sexual misconduct, corruption and so on. With every revelation, almost immediately the debate becomes a riot of whataboutism. Team A says that Team B has no right to criticize because they did the same thing. Team B points out that Team A has switched positions. Everyone has a point. And everyone is missing the point.
Sure, hypocrisy is a moral failing, and partisan inconsistency is an intellectual one. But neither changes the objective facts. This is something you’re supposed to learn as a child: It doesn’t matter what everyone else is doing or saying, wrong is wrong. It’s also something lawyers like Mr. Blanche are supposed to know. Telling a judge that the hypocrisy of the prosecutor — or your client’s transparency — means your client did nothing wrong would earn you nothing but a laugh.
Jonah Goldberg is editor-in-chief of The Dispatch and the host of The Remnant podcast. His Twitter handle is @JonahDispatch.