With the stroke of a pen, President Trump pardoned almost 1,600 January 6 rioters on his first day back in power.
Before Trump’s inauguration speech, CFTC-regulated prediction market Kalshi forecasted Trump would pardon 758 rioters overall. That number hovered between about 970 and 750 until Trump began signing executive orders.
On the morning of Inauguration Day, Kalshi’s traders gave Trump a 41% chance of pardoning over 1,000 rioters, so Trump’s blanket pardon wasn’t a complete surprise. Trading volume had reached over $900,000 by the night of Jan. 20.
Trump signed 40 executive actions and orders after his inauguration. Kalshi counted 26 executive orders out of the documents Trump signed on his first day.
Prediction markets suggest Trump’s possible Day 2 executive orders include even more pardons for other supporters.
More executive orders, pardons to come
Trump’s second day of executive orders is expected to be much smaller than his ceremonial first day, as traders on Kalshi predict Trump will sign between four and five executive orders.
One of those could be another anticipated Trump pardon: Ross Ulbricht. Ulbricht is serving a life sentence for founding and operating Silk Road, a site where users could anonymously buy illegal goods and services with untraceable crypto transactions. The Justice Department linked six overdose deaths to drugs purchased on Silk Road.
However, some libertarians and crypto enthusiasts view Ulbricht as a martyr. Silk Road was designed to operate outside the reach of any government, fulfilling the ambition early crypto traders had of creating an online world wholly separate from the physical one.
Elon Musk tweeted that Ulbricht would also receive a pardon, sending his odds of a pardon from 82% to 94% on Kalshi.
Ross will be freed too
— Elon Musk (@elonmusk) January 21, 2025
Other potential pardons in Trump’s first 100 days include former Trump allies. Steve Bannon has a 52% chance of a pardon, and Rudy Giuliani has a 45% of one. Roger Ver, an early Bitcoin adopter in prison for tax fraud, has a 44% chance of a pardon.
The next tier of potential pardons include Democratic New York City Mayor Eric Adams (34%) and former Illinois Governor Rod Blagojevich (27%). Adams faces corruption charges and Blagojevich served time in prison for trying to sell Barack Obama’s senate seat after Obama became president. Trump commuted Blagojevich’s prison sentence in February 2020, and Adams has been currying favor with Trump.
President Trump’s January 6 pardons were among his most anticipated Day 1 executive actions, which are part of a larger campaign of retribution against the Justice Department.
Trump is still mad about the indictments
During his first term, the FBI investigated the Trump campaign’s connections to Russia as part of a larger inquiry into Russian interference in the 2016 election. Trump fired FBI Director James Comey in May 2017, and a special council investigated Trump for obstruction of justice. The investigation ended in March 2019 when Robert Mueller submitted his report to the Department of Justice.
Trump’s legal woes followed him back into civilian life. His role in inciting the January 6 attack on the Capitol led to his second impeachment and an investigation by another special counsel led by Jack Smith. Smith also investigated the classified documents Trump stored in Mar-a-Lago’s bathroom and basement. His refusal to return those documents to the National Archives led to the second indictment Smith filed against him.
Trump’s attempt to overthrow Georgia’s electoral votes for Joe Biden in 2020 led to another federal case. Finally, New York Attorney General Alvin Bragg made Trump a felon by charging him with 34 counts of falsifying business records to disguise hush money to porn star Stormy Daniels.
Now that Trump is president, he seems poised to exact revenge on the justice system. He not only decried the “unfair weaponization” of the Justice Department in his inaugural speech. Trump also signed a Day 1 executive order to search for “political bias” in several agencies, including the Department of Justice.
Pardoning the January 6 rioters ended the largest investigation in the Justice Department’s history. Now Trump could launch one of the most vindictive campaigns against that same department in its history—something to keep in mind as more political betting markets populate across top prediction market sites.
