Since you mention it:
In 1954, members of the Puerto Rican Nationalist Party shot 5 Congressmen during an immigration debate on the floor of the United States House of Representatives.
Jimmy Carter commuted their lifetime prison sentences in 1979. (1/8)
These convictions prompted a Puerto Rican nationalist bombing campaign.
Bill Clinton pardoned most of the perpetrators in 1999, but was rejected by Oscar Lopez Rivera. Rivera received a second pardon from Barack Obama and a personal performance of “Hamilton” in his honor. (2/8)
In 1971 the Weather Underground detonated a bomb in a bathroom below the US Senate to protest American military operations in Laos.
Nobody was ever arrested for this act. Bill Ayers, one of the ringleaders, went on to become a close friend and mentor to Barack Obama. (3/8)
Ayres and his wife Bernadine Dohrn, another Weather Underground leader, both became university professors. Ayres got a taxpayer-funded position at University of Illinois.
Mention of Ayres’ ties to Obama during the 2008 presidential campaign were denounced as racist. (4/8)
Ayres and Dohrn also raised former San Francisco DA Chesa Boudin, son of Weathermen David Gilbert and Kathy Boudin (who had been convicted of murdering 3 people during a robbery).
Andrew Cuomo commuted Gilbert’s sentence in 2021. Boudin became a professor at Columbia. (5/8)
In 1983, other Weathermen affiliates involved in the Boudin killings again bombed the US Senate (as well as several other government buildings) in protest of American military actions in Lebanon and Grenada.
Bill Clinton pardoned the perpetrators on his last day in office. (6/8)
One of the perpetrators, Susan Rosenberg, went on to become a professional activist. She joined the board of a Black Lives Matter charity and obtained a taxpayer-funded position at City University of New York. (7/8)
On January 20, 2025, Donald Trump pardoned a number of people charged with crimes related to the January 6 riot at the US Capitol.
This act was widely described as “unprecedented.” None of the individuals pardoned have yet received a taxpayer-funded professorship. (8/8)
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