President Donald Trump pardoned two Washington, D.C., police officers on Wednesday in a show of support for law enforcement after his sweeping grant of clemency to Jan. 6 rioters.
Trump signaled that he would pardon Terence Sutton and Andrew Zabavskybe as he faced harsh criticism for pardoning defendants who assaulted officers in the Capitol attack, suggesting the clemency for police reflected his true stance on law enforcement.
“They arrested the two officers and put them in jail for going after a criminal. A rough criminal, by the way,” Trump said Tuesday in a preview of the order. “And I’m actually releasing [them]. I am the friend of police, more than any president that’s ever been in this office.”
The case in question occurred in October 2020, near the peak of that year’s Black Lives Matter protest movement. The incident began when Sutton attempted to…
