When President Trump issued sweeping pardons to some 1,500 Jan. 6 defendants on his first day in office, his action did not distinguish between those who peacefully wandered the Capitol grounds four years earlier and those who engaged in violence against police.
Now, critics of the move are raising concerns about the dangers posed by some of those convicted of violent felonies who have been released with no plan, and none of the monitoring or restrictions that typically accompany a more traditional parole process.
“I’m just afraid that I’m going to come home from work one night and he’s going to be right there. He’s going to be right there sitting on my porch,” said Shantelle Holeton, a 43-year-old factory worker who says she voted for Trump three times.
Then in 2023, a federal judge handed Schwartz one of the longest sentences of any Capitol riot defendant — more than 14 years in prison on charges that included four counts of assaulting police officers.
Body camera footage from Capitol Hill police during the riot show Schwartz spraying officers with pepper spray and wielding a baton. In court filings, the Department of Justice said he threw the first chair at officers, creating an opening that enabled hundreds of rioters to push back police lines.
U.S. Department of Justice
Federal prosecutors described Schwartz as “one of the most violent and aggressive participants in the January 6, 2021 attack on the United States Capitol,” and as someone who “has a long history of assaulting police officers and women.”
“A lot of us that were Jan. Sixers were actually innocent,” Schwartz claimed in an interview with right-wing influencer Christopher Key, days after being released from prison.
Speaking about the mass pardons of Jan 6 rioters during a press conference on Air Force One last week, President Trump said, “what I did was a great thing for humanity. They were treated very, very unfairly.”
The White House would not say whether anyone had reviewed Schwartz’s case before issuing him a pardon.
Dozens of defendants with criminal histories
Since Trump’s mass pardon on Jan. 20, several defendants have had incidents with law enforcement or other legal troubles. Matthew Huttle, who was sentenced to six months in prison for his actions at the Capitol, was killed by a police officer while resisting arrest during a traffic stop in Indiana last month. Elizabeth Hernandez, sentenced to 30 days in federal prison for her role in Jan. 6, was recently handed a 10-year prison sentence for a fatal DUI in Missouri in 2022.
There are no reports that Schwartz has re-offended in the weeks since his release.
Shortly before Schwartz was pardoned, an appeals court reversed only one of the 11 charges against him, and none of the assault charges. Schwartz has been citing the appeals court decision as proof of his innocence while appearing on right-wing media shows.
“There were a lot of folks who had no criminal history,” said Jason Manning, a former federal prosecutor involved in more than 50 Jan. 6-related cases.
“There were a lot of other defendants, however, who had extensive histories of domestic abuse, histories of assaulting police officers for whom assaulting the police on January 6th was not the first time they had assaulted police.”
Allegations of domestic violence, threats
Holeton says she met Schwartz on Facebook in 2019 and moved in with him in Owensboro, Kentucky, after several months of dating long distance. She says it was perfect for two weeks, and then things changed.
Shantelle Holeton
“I made a comment about how tall the corn had gotten in a week. We lived right across from a cornfield, and that comment started the argument that got me beat up,” Holeton said.
Even when Schwartz was in prison, Holeton said she was afraid.
“I walked around the house with a big butcher knife, because I was afraid that they were just gonna let him out and he was just gonna show up,” she said.
Shantelle Holeton
According to a 2015 incident report, Schwartz also threatened police, reportedly telling an officer in Owensboro, “I am going to shoot you right in the head.”
Holeton was not surprised when she heard Schwartz had been at the Capitol on Jan. 6, 2021.
“He found an opportunity to go and be violent,” she said. “That man thrives on violence. He thrives on people fearing him.”
Two years later, when Holeton heard that Schwartz would be in prison for more than a decade, she said she felt a huge weight had been lifted. She took to TikTok and Facebook to share an old photo of her battered face and a screenshot of Schwartz’s sentencing, with the caption, “whether you agree with the J6 prisoners or not, myself and all the other women he beat on finally got some justice.”
“I was like, oh, well, at least I don’t have to worry about him just showing up at my house for the next 14 years,” said Holeton, who did not want to share her specific location out of concern for her safety.
“He is not a hero”
Holeton, a registered Democrat, said she has voted for President Trump in the past three elections. She said she decided to vote for him in 2024 because she thought he would improve the economy, and she believed his administration would only pardon Jan. 6 defendants on a case-by-case basis.
In an interview on Fox News in early January, Vice President-elect JD Vance said those who protested peacefully should be pardoned, but he made an exception for rioters who engaged in violence.
Holeton believes, “Most of those people should have been allowed to go home, but not people like Pete.”
“The idea of pardoning people who had criminal histories, violent histories, it’s a really poor choice if you’re thinking about public safety going forward,” said Manning.
An online fundraiser for Schwartz has raised nearly $90,000 from supporters in the past two years.
“Pete is not the person that everybody thinks he is,” said Holeton. “Everyone is hailing him as a hero and he is not a hero. He is a violent, violent man.”
