Wall Street Journal: “Up to $135 billion in unemployment benefits was stolen during the pandemic, and the five-year statute of limitations is about to expire, meaning most of the fraud will go unpunished.”

“The requests of two prisoners who have taken the unusual step of asking a federal judge to nullify their death row commutations granted by President Joe Biden should be denied because the act of leniency doesn’t violate the Constitution, the Justice Department argued Monday in a court filing,” NBC News reports.

Vice President-elect J.D. Vance tempered his boss’s promise to pardon all the protesters involved in the US Capitol riot on Jan. 6, 2021, saying those who behaved violently should “obviously” not receive pardons, Bloomberg reports.

“Disgraced former congressman George Santos, facing a federal prison sentence, has won a few months’ freedom to come up with more than half a million dollars in court fines — including from work on his new podcast,” the AP reports.

“Disgraced former congressman George Santos has asked a New York judge to delay his sentencing on federal fraud charges until the summer so he can pay off more than half a million dollars in fines by making more episodes of his recently launched podcast ‘Pants on Fire,’” the AP reports.

Garrett Graff: “The media, the federal government generally, and the Justice Department and the FBI specifically, all have spent decades pretending that far-right violence and extremism just ‘happens.’ That there’s no ideology or organized effort behind it, that far-right extremism is just some sort of naturally occurring and random trait of certain offenders—like that some suspects have brown hair and others have blond hair.”

“And that’s where this week’s January 6th anniversary ties into three other apparent terror plots that we learned about and witnessed over the holidays that haven’t received proper context in the media’s coverage, three events that show that we are still under-reacting to the rising threat of far-right political violence in the United States, three events that show how unprepared we are for the months ahead as a nation, and three events that underscore—again—the danger posed by Trump’s choices of Kash Patel to head the FBI and Pam Bondi to serve as attorney general.”

The most notorious of all Jan. 6 defendants — former Proud Boys leader Enrique Tarrio — has formally asked President-elect Donald Trump to pardon him for his seditious conspiracy conviction related to the attack on the Capitol, Politico reports.

“President-elect Donald Trump hasn’t been sworn in yet, but his looming return has already upended hundreds of pending prosecutions against his supporters who attacked the US Capitol on January 6, 2021, and has disrupted the ongoing effort to arrest more rioters,” CNN reports.

Washington Post: Does a new report justify Jan. 6 pardons? In fact, it does the opposite.

“The Green Beret who shot himself seconds before the Tesla Cybertruck he rented went up in a fiery explosion outside Trump International Hotel in Las Vegas on New Year’s Day referred to the event as ‘a wake up call’ and effort to rid himself of the ‘burden’ of the lives he took in combat,” the Nevada Current reports.

“He also advocated a Jan. 6-like takeover of federal buildings and the ouster of Democrats from government and the military.”

He wrote: “Try peaceful means first, but be prepared to fight to get the Dems out of the fed government and military by any means necessary. They all must go and a hard reset must occur for our country to avoid collapse.”

The Green Beret who blew up a Tesla Cybertruck outside the Trump International Hotel this week in Las Vegas and took his own life had written that he wanted to send a “wake-up call” to the country, the New York Times reports.

CNN: Driver who exploded Cybertruck in Las Vegas railed about ‘political grievances’ and domestic issues before suicide.

“Hoping to generate new tips, the FBI is disclosing new information, including previously unreleased video, about a suspect who planted pipe bombs four years ago outside the offices of the Democratic and Republican national committees near the Capitol,” Stars and Stripes reports.

New York Times: “The suspect, wearing a mask, a gray hooded sweatshirt, dark pants and Nike Air Max Speed Turf sneakers, put two homemade bombs outside the Democratic and Republican national party headquarters the night before the formal congressional ceremony acknowledging Joseph Biden had won the 2020 election.”

“Neither device exploded, but their discovery that morning added to the fear and confusion on a day when a pro-Trump mob stormed the Capitol, briefly delaying the certification of the results.”

The FBI found more than 150 homemade bombs during a raid on a Virginia farm when they arrested a man on a firearms charge, Axios reports.

One person was dead and at least seven people were injured after a Tesla Cybertruck exploded and caught fire outside of the Trump International Hotel in Las Vegas, the New York Times reports.

Videos posted to social media showed a vehicle engulfed in flames outside the lobby’s entrance.

In one of his final acts in office, North Carolina Gov. Roy Cooper (D) granted clemency to 15 people on death row, forgave two people for their past crimes and made two others immediately eligible for parole, the Raleigh News & Observer reports.

Just after President Biden commuted the sentences of 37 prisoners on death row, President-elect Donald Trump pledged “to vigorously pursue the death penalty to protect American families and children from violent rapists, murderers, and monsters.”

He added: “We will be a Nation of Law and Order again!”

Politico: “In extraordinary but little-watched court proceedings since Election Day, judges appointed by presidents of both parties have emphasized the need for accountability for the people who stormed the Capitol in an attempt to derail the certification of Joe Biden’s 2020 victory.”

“These judges have sounded dire warnings about the fate of the country if the lessons of the 2020 election go unlearned, and they are bluntly bracing for a turbulent start to the second Trump presidency…”

“The judges’ clarion calls are becoming markedly more frequent and pointed as Trump’s inauguration nears.”

“The federal judge who oversaw the trial and sentencing of Oath Keepers founder Stewart Rhodes, who was convicted of seditious conspiracy for orchestrating a plan to violently stop the certification of Joe Biden’s presidency, said Wednesday that the prospect Donald Trump might pardon him is ‘frightening,'” Politico reports.

Said U.S. District Judge Amit Mehta: “The notion that Stewart Rhodes could be absolved is frightening and ought to be frightening to anyone who cares about democracy in this country.”

Mehta sentenced Rhodes to 18 years in prison last year, calling him “an ongoing threat and a peril to this country, to the republic and to the very fabric of our democracy.”