He did that last Monday, the first day of his second term, and the reunions were glorious.
More than 1,500 political prisoners were pardoned by Trump and immediately released from prison.
It had been four long years for many of the loved ones that were arrested and locked up. Most never got a trial. Some had yet to be charged.
Businessman Gary Heavin and his wife Diane organized a rescue of sorts and arranged transportation home for every single prisoner that was released last Monday.
They got to see some pretty emotional reunions too. Tyler Ethridge got his warm welcome from his little girl.
“Dada! Daddy's home,” cried one little girl.
Whole families came out. Tim Boughner was met by his mother, sister and nieces. There were a lot of tears.
Heavin says he was having a hard time holding it together as well.
“I hadn't cried that much, maybe in my life,” he said.
He says the reunions brought out the inner child of one daughter.
“Last night in Fort Lauderdale, she was about 30, Mid 30s, running, 'Daddy, Daddy.' This is what it was,” said Heavin, the founder of the women's fitness chain Curves.
As the joy gives way to daily life, some of the prisoners are talking about how brutal their time in the gulag really was.
Jake Lang was charged with wielding a deadly weapon against Capitol Police officers, not a minor crime, but in four full years he never got to a trial. He shared his story with The Big Mig Show podcast. His dad, Ned Lang, talked to a TikToker and said the prison in DC was something out of a third world country.
“He was actually sifting water through a sock because there's so much rust in the bottom of that prison that you can't drink the water. It was just like Vietnam where they have lights on all the time, you had two blankets, they call them suicide blankets, and they just laid them on the block and you didn't even have the mattress,” Ned Lang said.
Joe Biden’s Justice Department moved Lang around, using what they called Diesel Therapy.
“As soon as you start to get communication with your attorneys and your family, they scoop you up, and they take you to another prison. Usually a week to two weeks you're in solitary where they're transitioning you into a new prison, and then you're there for maybe three to five months, and they ship you out again,” he said.
Biden's due process
Lang says there were so many laws and constitutional rights being trampled it's hard to keep track.
“You can't talk to your attorneys. You can't hardly even talk to your family, and you can't possibly make a defense. And then, when you do get your attorneys, you talk to your attorneys, then they scoop you to another prison. All your notes and stuff, they take, so they know exactly what your defense is. It's like playing cards with your opponent looking over your back, looking at your hand. It's impossible to win.”
