Arrest of pardoned Jan. 6 rioter adds to embarrassing trend

Once is an anomaly, twice is a trend — and whatever number we have hit in the running tally of MAGA activists charged with sex crimes certainly constitutes a disturbing pattern. 

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My colleague Steve Benen has done an excellent job of keeping track of Jan. 6 insurrectionists who have been charged or convicted of sex crimes after being pardoned by President Donald Trump last year as part of his authoritarian push to shield Jan. 6 participants from criminal accountability. 

That list grew a tad longer Friday with the arrest in Florida of two Trump supporters among more than 250 others in a sting operation to catch human traffickers and child predators.

Polk County Sheriff Grady Judd identified one of the suspects as Ryan Yates, whose guilty plea to a felony charge of civil disorder was among the many convictions cleared by Trump’s pardon.

“We’re not giving him a blanket pardon,” Judd said during his Friday conference. “He [Yates] got away with it with a federal system. But not here,” Judd said. “He came here to violate the law. We arrested him.”