Donald Trump supporters who attacked the U.S. Capitol four years ago are beginning to leave prison, after the newly installed president issued a sweeping pardon that signalled he intends to make aggressive use of his executive power.

Stewart Rhodes, the former head of the Oath Keepers militia, was among Jan. 6 inmates freed under President Trump's pardons and commutations.

The move, in effect, validated the far-right leader’s defiant claim that his criminal prosecution was a kind of political persecution.

President Donald Trump on Monday pardoned more than 1,000 people charged in the January 6, 2021, attack on the US Capitol, and commuted the sentences of leaders of the Proud Boys and Oath Keepers.

Former Proud Boys extremist group leader Enrique Tarrio and Oath Keepers founder Stewart Rhodes have been released from prison after their lengthy sentences for seditious conspiracy convictions in the Jan.

Rhodes and Tarrio were among the most prominent defendants from January 6 and had received some of the harshest punishments.

Proud Boys leader Enrique Tarrio and Oath Keepers leader Stewart Rhodes were released from prison following President Donald Trump's pardon for Jan. 6 rioters.

Rhodes’ appearance came the day after he was released from prison as a result of Trump’s order of clemency benefitting the more than 1,500 people charged with federal crimes in the Jan. 6

At least [in] the cases we looked at, these were people that actually love our country,’ Trump says of January 6 rioters

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Enrique Tarrio of the Proud Boys and Stewart Rhodes of the Oath Keepers asserted that they wanted President Trump to seek revenge on their behalf for being prosecuted in connection with the Jan. 6 riot.