A Public Defender for Jan. 6th Rioters Reacts to Trump’s Sweeping Pardons

CHRISTIANE AMANPOUR, CHIEF INTERNATIONAL ANCHOR: Meantime, in Washington, the Trump-Musk-ian demolition project against perceived enemies proceeds apace. The new Justice Department has extracted from the FBI compliance to hand over details of 5,000 employees who worked on the January 6th investigations. Of course, they fear retribution and even termination. This follows President Trump’s day one pardons for a thousand rioters, of course, many of them who were arrested, tried, convicted, and sentenced in U.S. courts for their actions on that day four years ago. Heather Shaner is a longtime public defender who has represented dozens of those individuals, and she joins Michel Martin now to tell us what she’s learned from that work.

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MICHEL MARTIN, CONTRIBUTOR: Thanks, Christiane. Heather Shaner, thank you so much for talking with us.

HEATHER SHANER, SUBJECT, “THE NEW YORKER’S “PUBLIC DEFENDER” AND CRIMINAL DEFENSE ATTORNEY WHO REPRESENTED JAN. 6 RIOTERS: Nice to meet you.

MARTIN: Ms. Shaner, you know how we found you, is that you were profiled in a New Yorker documentary called Public Defender. And the piece — and of course there was a companion piece that followed in the magazine that described your work defending some of the January 6th defendants. So, I wanted to ask you about that. How did you come to have these clients?

SHANER: I am what’s called a court appointed public defender. I’m not actually in the physical office of the federal defender. There’s a small panel of attorneys who accept cases. And there were over a thousand cases coming through the federal defender’s office. So, Michelle Peterson asked if I would take some. She was the head of the office in terms of the J6 cases. And I said I would, except I did not want to represent anyone who had injured a police officer.

MARTIN: OK. So, did you have any hesitation at all? I know you just said that you did have a red line, and that red line was you weren’t going to represent anybody who had assaulted the police. But did you have any hesitation at all?

SHANER: On January the 6th, like everyone in D.C., I was horrified and terrified and did not plan to represent any of the rioters, but as the days passed, and I was asked, would I do it? I decided they also required a lawyer to protect their liberty rights.

MARTIN: How did the cases come to you? I mean, how many of you had so far? I think you’ve had — do I have this right, that you’ve had more than 40? Is that right?

SHANER: About 45.

MARTIN: How do people receive you? Is there — were people generally happy to hear from you or not?

SHANER: Well, a few of the people, at the very beginning, only wanted a lawyer who would represent them based on the Constitution of 1776. And they didn’t like it very much when I told them there was no United States, let alone Constitution in 1776. Most of the defendants were terrified, because most of the people I represented were unintentional rioters and they came from the midlands and didn’t really know what they were getting into on January the 6th. And they were thrilled to have a lawyer to help them. A lot of them were a little smarter, and they would Google and find out who I was, and when they found out that I gave books and the U.S. Constitution and reading materials to my clients, they either really wanted to do that or they thought they needed another lawyer.

MARTIN: How did you come up with that approach, by the way, of giving your clients reading materials and things of that sort? I know that — I saw in the documentary, I saw that you have a lot of books. And so, clearly you are a reader yourself, but how did you come up with that idea?

SHANER: Throughout 40 years, I always gave books to my clients, because when you’re incarcerated, the way you can escape your prison cell is you can read a book and it can take you around the world, it can take you into the future, it can take you back through history, and it gave a lot of solace to my clients. For the January 6th people, it was an awful lot of civics education that they needed. And also, I thought they needed a little bit of information about other people in the United States and around the world to let them know that they were not the only people who had problems.

MARTIN: But you said all of them were kind of unintentional rioters, but just say more about why you say that.

SHANER: I say that because I didn’t represent members of the Oath Keepers or Proud Boys or those who had the 1776, the 3 percenters. The majority of the people I represented came from small towns in Eastern Washington, Central Florida, Eastern Texas, Indiana, Illinois. They did not have an understanding of what was going on inside the Capitol that day, they didn’t understand the Electoral College, they misunderstood what happened on election night when it would show Trump up and then Trump down, and they thought it was all manipulated by the deep state. And they didn’t know that the deep state didn’t exist. Most of them only had access to the internet and far-right media. And if you repeat a lie often enough, these people believed it. So, they came to Washington because Trump said, come on, and either they came to save America, or they came because it was going to be a big party. And when they arrived, they apparently were served a lot of alcohol and they also — an enormous number of people at the Capitol were smoking marijuana. So, you had people who were a little inebriated. They were all intoxicated by being surrounded by people who agreed with them rather than family members and others who, since November, were telling them that their ideas were cockamamie. And they got all hyped-on adrenaline, went into the capital, screamed and yelled, marched around, this is our house, this is our house. Went home. I saw that there were a lot of rioters who had done terrible things and a large number of my clients were upset when they saw the destruction that other individuals had engaged in and the violence.

MARTIN: OK. So, when you said that they only had access to far-right media, I mean, if they had access to the internet, they had access to everything, which means they could have sought out other information. So, they were choosing to focus on that particular sort of point of view. So, I don’t know, why should people have sympathy for that?

SHANER: Oh, I don’t say you should have sympathy for them, but you sure want to educate them. You want to listen to what they believe, question them as to their source of information and why they believe it, and find out if they’re willing to read another point of view, to be educated a little, that there is more than one way to interpret the election, that there was more than one way to interpret what’s going on in the United States and in the world.

MARTIN: In The New Yorker documentary, and then the piece that accompanied it, they profiled two — just two of the 45 clients that you represented, and they had different stories. Just as briefly as you can, will you just tell me about them? I mean, start with Annie Howell.

SHANER: Annie was solicited in up — in Central Pennsylvania by a man named Frank Scavo, who was a far-right operative. He sent hundreds of people to Washington on January 6th in buses. Between the election in 2020 and January 6th, Annie had been very active in politics. She met Eric Trump. She met Hannity. She collected affidavits from people to prove there was voting fraud. And Annie was initially charged with felony and misdemeanors.

MARTIN: And Annie, as I recall, I think many people might know her name because she testified before the January 6th Committee. And so, if you would remind people like what happened in her case.

SHANER: I was lucky to be able to negotiate down to misdemeanor plea for Annie. Judge Hogan, nonetheless, felt that her participation in the riot was intentional, even if she had changed her views since then, and he sentenced her to 60 days in jail. Annie, the first thing she did after we met was get a library card and started to read. And while she was incarcerated, she read a book a day. And she said her life was totally changed. And she was a big reader now, and that she had been more educated in the years since I began to represent her than in her entire life.

MARTIN: Your other client — the other client that profiled on the piece was Jack Griffith. Kind of a different story. What’s his story?

SHANER: Jack came to D.C. from us from Tennessee. He was pretty addicted to the internet and his goal in life was to have good abs and a lot of followers. And he came to Washington, D.C. for the party. And he videoed himself screaming and yelling and making all kinds of noise because he wanted to get internet followers. And he was zero political, zero informed, and he wasn’t registered to vote. Jack, and was ever only charged with misdemeanors and he was sentenced to, I think, 90 days of home confinement and he never went to jail. Jack was offered books and he never read anything. And he still didn’t vote in the last election because he’s still not registered, but he’s still is — I think he is producing a video game in honor of Trump.

MARTIN: Among the people you represented, did you see — was there a kind of a through line there beyond the fact that you’re saying that most of them didn’t really mean to — say they didn’t — or at least the circumstances suggest they didn’t really mean to be part of all of that?

SHANER: The one thing that I think characterizes the majority of the people I represented, not all of them, but a lot of them, is there was some health issues. Almost every young man, old man, woman I dealt with, by the time we got — you start out with pre-trial services and you find out do they have any mental health or drug concerns, then you get to know them over a long period of time, then they’re interviewed for probation, if they plead guilty, and there’s a very thorough probation investigation, including medical issues. The two soldiers I represented had severe PTSD and depression and anxiety. The majority of the other individuals I represented had also PTSD from childhood trauma, ADHD, did not succeed in school. Had a variety of other mental health issues, depression, anxiety, the most common one. So, that was a factor that impacted their choices. They were isolated and alone during COVID. They became active with political groups during that time to help remove some of the isolation. I have one guy from Upstate New York, Syracuse, and he was alone throughout COVID until he was solicited online to a far-right chat group, and it gave him comfort. And they had a break in their education and had, for whatever reason, in the last several years, chosen misinformation.

MARTIN: Heather, you know that one of President Trump’s first official acts upon taking office was to pardon nearly all of the 1,600 people in connection with January 6th and he, you know, commuted others, regardless of whether they had assaulted police officers or not, regardless of whether they were convicted of conspiracies or not, and regardless of prior, and it emerges that some of these people did have significant prior acts of violence. So, I don’t know. How do you feel now? I mean —

SHANER: None of my clients wrote to me before January 20th and said, oh, Miss Shaner, can you get me one of those pardons? Not one. Annie, in fact, wasn’t interested and didn’t want to pardon. Initially, when the pardons were issued, I felt like all the work I had done with my clients and all the education and friendship and love we had shared and the documentary itself, the work it was doing was invalidated, and I was very upset. I thought that the pardons are just a show by the showmen in the Capitol, in the White House right now. And it’s a very bad idea. However, if in any way it leads towards reconciliation, then that would be good. If we can all acknowledge, as the judges did in their dismissal orders, that what happened on January 6 happened and no dismissal order, no pardon is going to erase the day of infamy and violence, if we can agree that it occurred and then move on, then for my clients, if there’s any benefit to them, so be it. The pardons cannot whitewash what happened on January 6th. And just as they say at the Holocaust Museum, document, talk about the truth, agree on facts, and never forget.

MARTIN: So, before we let you go, what do you see as your role in this moment?

SHANER: Well, I don’t have any more January 6th clients except those who have become my friends. But I have a lot of young men at the D.C. jail who are charged with guns and carjacking and drugs, and I’m going to do whatever I can to keep them free of the draconian punishments that come down on your heads when you do foolish things because you’re 18 years old.

MARTIN: Well, Heather Shaner, thank you so much for talking with us.

SHANER: Thank you.