The hugs and tearful video calls seen outside the D.C. jail after Jan. 6 inmates were pardoned and released are what you might expect when someone gets out of jail.
Denials and defiance made these moments so different.
Ryan Wilson was convicted after thrusting a pipe toward police officers inside the Capitol on Jan. 6, 2021.
“They were phony charges. I never touched anybody that day. But they don't care,” he told reporters after he was released Wednesday.
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J6 rioter Jake Lang was convicted of using D.C. officers’ own riot shields against them. He emerged from jail the previous night.
"It is no longer the age where we have to hide in America. We are back – the patriots! We don't have to crawl in the back corners,” Lang said.
The gathering of supporters outside the D.C. jail attracted members of the extremist group the Proud Boys, and former Oath Keeper founder Stewart Rhodes.
“We were innocent,” he said after his release from prison in Maryland.
But years of investigations and prosecutions suggest otherwise, with nearly 1,600 Jan. 6 cases, including more than 600 cases for alleged violent acts against officers.
Before he left office, U.S. Attorney for D.C. Matt Graves tried to assure D.C. that even pardons and commutations couldn’t erase the record of the crimes scores of people committed at the Capitol.
“There will always be a record, and there will always be accountability for hundreds and hundreds and hundreds of people, regardless of what happens in the future,” he said.
The record the now-former U.S. attorney assured us would always be available, showing what happened that day, is now harder to find. Court records still exist. But just days into President Donald Trump’s term, FBI websites that detailed the investigation are gone, including photos of suspects who were still wanted.
Websites documenting the agency’s largest investigation ever are no longer active, an FBI spokesperson told NBC News.
Active cases and sentencings are now being dismissed, meaning crucial evidence that would have been introduced in court likely will never be made public.
On Jan. 6 of this year, President Joe Biden issued a warning to Americans in a Washington Post op-ed.
“An unrelenting effort has been underway to rewrite – even erase – the history of that day. To tell us we didn’t see what we all saw with our own eyes.”

Many Jan. 6 defendants who were released are holding firm they were unfairly treated.
“I believe that people who were there were defending democracy. I believe that we had an election that had major constitutional issues,” pardoned defendant Greg Purdy said.
What Purdy described as defending democracy on Jan. 6 led a jury to convict him of violent felonies. It’s now up to history to decide how the day is remembered.