The biggest mass prosecution of our time has been followed by the biggest mass pardons. 

Full Measure was at the Washington, D.C., jail as people gathered ahead of the historic mass releases from prison that started Jan. 22. Among those there to support their Jan. 6 brethren were several who’d already done their time.

"I did about 32 months for pushing a fence," James Grant said. "And, believe it or not, I actually had a full scholarship to the University of Alabama and Washington and Lee Law schools, and Jan. 6 kind of put the kibosh on that.” He says he now hopes to try to pick up where he left off.

About 1,300 people were convicted of crimes for storming the Capitol after a pro-Donald Trump rally on Jan. 6, 2021. The majority were peaceful, but there were violent clashes between police and some rioters.

Jan. 6 became the biggest mass prosecution event in U.S. history, with Trump’s enemies saying it was an insurrection that threatened democracy. Others insisted the crowd was incited, then unfairly prosecuted by a weaponized Department of Justice.

Treniss Evans is one of the Jan. 6 attendees who cooperated with the FBI after the rally when he learned attendees were being hunted down. Nonetheless, he was awakened one morning at his home by an FBI SWAT team. We first told his story on my "Full Measure" TV program two years ago.

Surveillance video showed FBI agents, weapons drawn, surrounding Evans' Texas home and his 13-year-old son standing outside with his hands up.

"There was 20-plus agents there," Evans said. "They had snipers, they had vehicles to block off the street. I mean, it was insane."

Considering the presence of a small FBI army, you might have thought Evans was a vicious criminal – armed and dangerous. In fact, he had no history of violence. His crime was climbing through a window to enter the U.S. Capitol on Jan. 6.

"People were coming out of the building saying, 'The police are letting us in. You can go in. You can just walk around. Everybody's taking videos. It's fine,'” Evans said.

Today, Evans welcomes Trump's pardon, even after serving his jail sentence for simple misdemeanors: Entering and remaining in a restricted building. He was sentenced to 20 days in jail.

"I was the first person sentenced to weekend prison for Jan. 6," Evans told me. "I went to a maximum security facility where they held me in solitary confinement. They chained me up like Hannibal Lecter, hauled me up to this unit and say, 'This is where we kept the 911 guys.' And then they have to let me out every Monday morning."

He's finished his time, but is still on federal probation.

The first releases came two days after Trump’s inauguration.

Outside the Washington, D.C., jail was the mother of the only person violently killed that day, unarmed protester Ashli Babbitt.

"We've been working for this for four years, waiting for President Trump to come back into office so that he could pardon the men and women that have been unjustly charged behind the events of Jan. 6," said Babbitt's mother, Michelle Witthoeft. "It also means there's hope of some sort of investigation into my daughter's death that never actually happened."

Babbitt was shot by Capitol Police Lt. Michael Byrd as she tried to climb through a broken window in the Capitol. Prosecutors didn’t charge Byrd, concluding there was no evidence he didn’t fear for his life or the lives of Congress when he pulled the trigger.

More than 160 rioters were charged with using a weapon or violently attacking police. They were pardoned, too.

One poll by a left-leaning group taken before Trump took office showed two-thirds (66%) of Americans opposed pardoning people who committed violent crimes. But a similar number, 69%, did not disagree with pardoning nonviolent offenders.

Like Evans.

He sees the pardon as "restoration to at least some respect."

"I mean, I'm on federal probation still," he said. "I'm going to be on federal probation at the end of 2025. I started on federal probation March of 2021. I'm still on it for misdemeanor trespassing – no one hurt, no one damaged. I spoke out against any of those things, and yet here I am still because they don't like the things I say today."

Several Capitol rioters committed suicide awaiting sentencing on minor charges. The Justice Department is now dismissing hundreds of cases that were still under active prosecution.