Sentencing: Rhodes, 18 years; Meggs, 12 years.

 This morning's Crabgrass learning of the sentencing was via posting at emptywheel.

The emptywheel posting had comments, and one item headline noted the man's given first name is Elmer. Wikipedia gives his full legal name as  Elmer Stewart Rhodes III, while websearch also reports him as "Stuart Rhodes." In any event, eighteen years.

A websearch that attained ambiguous "will consider" returns, e.g., this ABC item:

Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis was asked on Thursday about potentially using his pardon power if elected president to offer clemency to Jan. 6 defendants or even Donald Trump -- and while he didn't answer directly, he suggested he would consider it.

DeSantis made his comments while appearing on the "The Clay Travis & Buck Sexton Show" amid an early media blitz one day after launching a bid for the Republican presidential nomination in 2024.

"A big part of being president is pardon powers. Do you think the Jan. 6 defendants deserve to have their cases examined by a Republican president? And if Trump, let's say, gets charged with federal offenses and you are the president of the United States, would you look at potentially pardoning Trump himself based on the evidence that might emerge of those charges?" Travis asked DeSantis.

The governor did not mention either Trump or any specific Jan. 6 cases by name but suggested he was open to the idea.

"We will be aggressive [in] issuing pardons," he said, arguing that the Department of Justice and FBI had become "weaponized" to pursue political rather than law enforcement goals.

[...] DeSantis' remarks about pardons come on the same day a federal judge handed down the longest sentence to date for a Jan. 6 crime.

Stewart Rhodes, the founder of the far-right Oath Keepers, was sentenced to 18 years in prison after being convicted of seditious conspiracy and other charges. Rhodes calls himself a "political prisoner."

"You, sir, present an ongoing threat and peril to this country," the judge told Rhodes, also citing the stockpile of weapons that the Oath Keepers had amassed outside the nation's capital ahead of the certification of Joe Biden's presidential win two years ago.

The Department of Justice reports that more than 1,000 people have been arrested in connection with the government's Jan. 6 investigation.

More than 300 people have been charged with assaulting, resisting, or impeding officers or employees that day, the DOJ has said, and more than 100 defendants have been accused of using deadly weapons.

About 140 police were attacked on Jan. 6, according to DOJ.

Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis speaks during a fundraising picnic for U.S. Rep. Randy Feenstra, R-Iowa, Saturday, May 13, 2023, in Sioux Center, Iowa.

Charlie Neibergall/AP

On Travis and Sexton's radio show, DeSantis said that "what I'm going to do is -- I'm going to do on day one -- I will have folks that will get together and look at all these cases, who are people, who are victims of weaponization or political targeting."

The governor didn't say whether he felt a pardon would be appropriate for the former president, whose conduct related to the attack on the Capitol is being investigated by special counsel Jack Smith.

But DeSantis said that there was the possibility that those charged in Jan. 6 were being mistreated.

"If there are three other people who did the same thing, but just in a context like [Black Lives Matter protests] and they don't get prosecuted at all, that is uneven application of justice, and so we're going to find ways where that did not happen and then we will use the pardon power," he said, later noting "it will be done on a case-by-case basis."

"And that could be from a grandma who got arrested and prosecuted to all the way up to, potentially, Trump himself," Travis said.

"I would say any example of disfavored treatment based on politics or weaponization would be included in that review, no matter how small or how big," DeSantis said.

His campaign did not respond to a request for clarification on his pardon comments.

The Florida governor, who has commanded state politics with a Republican supermajority in Tallahassee, has indicated in interviews that he would wield more executive muscle as president than is typical, touting the "levers" of the office that can enact day-one changes -- including by bypassing norms of independent law enforcement agencies.

Asked about the DOJ and FBI by WTN 99.7's Steve Murphy, DeSantis said, "Democrat but mostly Republican presidents have bought this idea that they're independent [agencies] and you can't be involved with them. No, they answer to the elected president. You have every right to call in the attorney general, call in the FBI director and say, 'Hey, wait a minute … Why are you doing this?'"

DeSantis declared his long anticipated candidacy on Wednesday night during a Twitter event with Elon Musk which was initially delayed by technical glitches.

As some of his primary opponents, like Trump, seized on the malfunction to criticize DeSantis, his team said the problems were due to how popular the online event was -- straining Twitter's capacity.

He enters the race as potentially the biggest challenger to Trump for the GOP nomination, early polls show.

Why, when the headline talks of sentencing, shift to DeSantis talking of "weaponizing?"

Two reasons, ABC being quoted but with the sentencing being collaterally mentioned, and editorial privilege.

Jan. 6 was what it was. The sentencing is what it is. Reporting of DeSantis is news.

That  Clay Travis & Buck Sexton Show title sounds as if it is a bluegrass music thing, not politics. But being political, might it move to Twitter?

Changing the websearch from DeSantis, to Trump yields, e.g. this:

 This article is more than 8 months old

Donald Trump says he plans to pardon US Capitol attack participants if elected

Donald Trump said on Thursday he would pardon and apologize to those who participated in the deadly attack on the US Capitol on January 6 if he were elected to the White House again.

“I mean full pardons with an apology to many,” he told Wendy Bell, a conservative radio host on Thursday. “I will be looking very, very strongly about pardons, full pardons.”

That is Guardian reporting, while Reuters reported: 

Jan 29 (Reuters) - U.S. former President Donald Trump said on Saturday if he were to run for president and win in 2024, he would pardon people charged with criminal offenses in connection with the deadly Jan. 6 assault by his supporters on the U.S. Capitol.

Trump, who has not said whether he will run for president again after his defeat by Democrat Joe Biden in the 2020 election, was speaking at a rally in Conroe, Texas.

"Another thing we'll do, and so many people have been asking me about it, if I run and if I win, we will treat those people from Jan. 6 fairly," Trump said to applause. "We will treat them fairly. And if it requires pardons we will give them pardons. Because they are being treated so unfairly."

Thousands of Trump supporters stormed the Capitol on Jan. 6, 2021, the worst assault on Congress since the War of 1812. Fueled by Trump's false claims that his November 2020 election defeat was the result of fraud, the attackers sought to stop Congress from certifying Biden's victory.

Both Trump reports were from 2022. The DeSantis report, yesterday.?

Last: websearch = Number pardons DeSantis issued as governor florida 

Run that search in whatever search engine you prefer, and make what you will of the items returned.

With Trump and DeSantis the present Republican front runners; Trump leading in polling, DeSantis second, others at single digit percentages; there seems little difference between the two, with regard to pardon power and possible intentions, if winning the 2024 general election. 

Both seem intent for now posturing for their party primary via extremism, from which they can tone down and alter positions, whichever wins primary voting, to better fare in the 2024 general election's independent vote.