John Pierce, a lawyer representing dozens of defendants facing charges for the Jan. 6, 2021, attack on the U.S. Capitol, told supporters in a fundraising email Sunday that if Kamala Harris defeats Donald Trump in this year’s presidential election, his “contingency” plan for getting presidential pardons for his clients will be off the table.
Pierce, who created the National Constitutional Law Union in 2021, said in an email that the group “has represented more January 6 defendants than any other attorney or law firm.”
“Since Joe Biden withdrew from the race, Kamala has become the front-runner, and fear has been keeping me up at night for our clients,” he wrote. Pierce said that while he hopes to win in the courts, presidential pardons for his “patriots” has always been his backup plan, but “they will NEVER happen under President Harris.”
Pierce has good reason to hope that Trump could come to the rescue if he returns to office. Not only has Trump floated the idea of pardoning Jan. 6 defendants—he has referred to them as “hostages”—he also appeared in a fundraising video for the NCLU earlier this year. “I’m a victim, but there are many victims” of the “weaponization of our government,” Trump claimed, adding that Nov. 5 will be “the single biggest day in the history of our country.”
When Pierce set up the NCLU, Newsweek noted that in addition to “several Proud Boy suspects accused of taking part in the Capitol attack,” he has also represented MAGA insiders Rudy Giuliani and George Papadopoulos and helped raise $2 million in bail money for Kyle Rittenhouse, who became a MAGA movement folk hero after killing two people at a protest in Kenosha, Wisconsin after police shot and killed a black man.
While he was representing Rittenhouse, Pierce was “more interested in promoting himself than representing Kyle,” said Mark Richards, another lawyer who represented Rittenhouse. Richards said Pierce had set an unknowing Rittenhouse up with a photo op with Proud Boys leaders, adding that “people were using this kid to raise money and profit themselves, and it turns my stomach.” Rittenhouse, who was acquitted of homicide charges in November 2021, said that he had fired Pierce for “putting me in situations like that with people I don’t agree with.”
In September 2021, NPR ran a story noting that Pierce was representing more Jan. 6 defendants than anyone else and asking, “Should he?” NPR reported that Pierce had been a civil attorney who had never done any criminal trials. His association with Rittenhouse and his “fiery” pro-Trump stance may have helped him win clients, NPR noted:
In fact, on the day of the riot, when someone tweeted that there was only room for, quote, “peaceful people in the Trump movement,” Pierce responded, wrong. In another tweet after the riot, he wrote, quote, “When tyranny reaches a certain point, the time for peaceful protest comes to an end.”
Pierce told NPR that statement was not a reference to the attack on the Capitol but “a general statement about America’s philosophy of government.”
The NPR story quoted other unnamed conservative attorneys calling Pierce a “grifter.” The fundraising email Pierce sent Sunday says that contributions are not tax-deductible, and concludes with this fine-print note:
The NCLU is a non-profit social welfare organization that is in the process of applying for 501(c)(4) tax-exempt status. It is anticipated that a substantial amount of funds raised by the NCLU will be paid to a law firm owned and/or controlled by the founder, chairman of the board and CEO of the NCLU for legal services and costs incurred by clients of the firm in connection with litigations within the full mission statement as determined in the sole discretion of the NCLU board of directors and as approved for payment by those clients.
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