Federal prosecutors on Tuesday began the process of formally dismissing cases against more than four dozen Illinoisans charged with playing a role in the Jan. 6, 2021, attack on the U.S. Capitol after President Donald Trump pardoned or commuted the sentences of everyone involved.

Making good on a campaign promise, Trump signed the extraordinary executive action as part of a flurry of orders shortly after being sworn in on Monday. The move effectively wipes the slate clean for some 1,500 people charged nationwide since Jan. 6, including 53 people from Illinois.

Among them: a former Chicago police officer; an ex-Illinois National Guard soldier; a suburban member of the Proud Boys white nationalist group; a Northwest Side political activist; and a downstate man who allegedly caused a fatal head-on crash near Springfield in a botched suicide attempt while awaiting sentencing.

Of the Illinoisans who had faced charges, 47 were already convicted at the time the president signed the clemency order, with the vast majority of those having been sentenced to probation, a Tribune analysis of court records shows. Six were in prison and six others were still awaiting trial as of Monday, while three defendants had been convicted and were due to report to prison soon.

By 2 p.m., federal prosecutors in the U.S. District Court in Washington, D.C., where all the cases were indicted, had filed paperwork to dismiss the charges in at least a dozen cases against Illinois defendants — a process that could take several days to finalize.

Trump’s blanket pardons drew criticism from many circles, including Illinois Gov. JB Pritzker, who said Tuesday it showed the Republican Party now “stands against law enforcement.”

“What used to be the party of law and order is now the party of chaos and disorder,” Pritzker said at an unrelated news conference in River North.

During the attack on the Capitol, Pritzker said Trump sat “for three and a half hours, watching TV as the Jan. 6 rioters that he encouraged were attacking the Capitol. Sat there, doing nothing. Doing nothing.”

But others, including lawyers for some of those charged, praised the move, particularly for nonviolent defendants who they say were lumped in with other rioters even though they merely walked through the Capitol taking pictures.

Chicago attorney Nishay Sanan, who represents former Chicago police Officer Karol Chwiesiuk and his sister, Agnieszka, told the Tribune his clients were scapegoated by then-Mayor Lori Lightfoot and police Superintendent David Brown, ending Karol’s police career even though he was charged only with misdemeanor trespassing.

Both were eventually convicted and sentenced to probation.

“All he and his sister were doing was walking around,” Sanan said. “They went in through an open door. No one was telling them to leave. They didn’t touch anybody. Didn’t hurt anybody.”

Sanan said Karol Chwiesiuk lost his job with the Chicago Police Department because his firearm owner’s identification card was revoked upon arrest. Now that the charges have been nullified, Sanan said Chwiesiuk may try to get his job back.

Nationwide, more than 1,500 people were arrested in all 50 states and the District of Columbia on charges stemming from the Capitol breach, an investigation that has been described by prosecutors as the largest criminal probe in the country’s history.

The riot took place after a Trump speech imploring supporters to march on the Capitol and interrupt the peaceful transfer of power after his loss to Democrat Joe Biden in the 2020 election. The fallout ultimately swept Trump himself up in a criminal case that has since been dismissed, and became a rallying cause for Democrats who say he and his supporters organized a dangerous coup to defy the election results.

Trump, however, repeatedly attempted to downplay the events at the Capitol as a “love fest” while painting those charged as “political prisoners.”

As the president returned Monday to the White House, signing the pardons along with a host of sweeping executive orders, he again referred to the rioters as “hostages.”

“These people have been destroyed. What they’ve done to these people is outrageous. There’s rarely been anything like it in history, in the history of our country,” Trump told reporters in the Oval Office. “There’s never been anything like this. And you know it’s almost 100% — think of this — almost 100% of the people are convicted. 100%. It’s Washington, D.C.”

Dave Leyden, the twin brother of Jan. 6 rioter Daniel Leyden, told the Tribune in a text message Monday evening that he was driving from Chicago to the downstate Thomson federal prison in anticipation of his brother’s release, though he still awaited official communication on the clemency process.

Daniel Leyden has been serving a three-year sentence after pleading guilty to assaulting law enforcement officers at the Capitol barricades on Jan. 6, 2021. Another Leyden brother, Joseph, also pleaded guilty to that charge and completed a six-month prison sentence.

Dave Leyden spent his Monday morning with Joseph celebrating the 47th president’s inauguration at a pro-Trump watch party inside a Southwest Side pizza shop before anxiously watching the TV for updates on the Jan. 6 defendants. Once Trump signed off on the pardons, Dave Leyden texted that he headed toward his other brother’s prison to “be ready first thing in the morning to bring him” home.

“THE J6rs and their families (had) ENOUGH release them all now,” Dave Leyden wrote.

On Tuesday morning, he texted an update that his brother had been released and they were on their way home and “all very tired.”

Four years ago Mathew Capsel also joined the Jan. 6 attack on the U.S. Capitol. On Monday, the 32-year-old watched Trump’s second inauguration from the much calmer setting of his downstate home in Marseilles, and processed the news that Trump was pardoning him.

“I’m not going down to D.C.,” Capsel, who completed his 18-month prison sentence in February 2024, quipped when asked where he was watching Trump speak. He paused before adding that “I have a lot of regrets for what happened on that day, for sure.”

Later that evening, Capsel said his lawyer informed him that he was granted a pardon.

Convicted of clashing with National Guard troops outside the U.S. Capitol, he was identified by a former neighbor who tipped federal agents to his social media posts and videos showing his participation in the attack, according to court documents.

At the same time, Capsel maintained to the Tribune: “It was not an insurrection. … It was being swept up in the moment. Like, the energy in the air, everything. It just — you kind of knew what was gonna happen.”

Despite Trump’s rhetoric on the campaign trail, federal authorities continued to bring new cases against Illinoisans even after Trump won back the White House in November.

Among them was Emil Kozeluh, a convicted burglar who was charged days after the election with joining a mob of protesters who burst through a line of police trying to protect the doors on the Capitol’s west terrace.

According to the charges, Kozeluh, of Palos Heights, dressed in an American flag sweatshirt, balaclava, and a red hat with the words “Trump 2020. NO MORE BULL(expletive),” was captured on video amid a crowd of rioters, yelling at police and giving them the middle finger as flash bangs were going off in the background.

Attorney Steve Greenberg, who represents Kozeluh, said he had not received notice yet on the dismissal of his client’s case as of Monday evening but that “he should have never gotten charged in the first place.”

Meanwhile, the majority of the people from Illinois who were charged faced only misdemeanor charges such as trespassing or disorderly conduct.

One of those, Lawrence Ligas, has been awaiting trial for more than three years. Ligas is well-known on Chicago’s Northwest Side, where he was for years a low-level political operative to various groups and candidates, including former Ald. Helen Shiller and U.S. Sen. Carol Moseley Braun.

After the misdemeanor charges against Ligas were dismissed Tuesday, he texted a Tribune reporter calling himself “the Jan. 6 poster child pragmatist, law-abiding, not a rioter, and innocent.”

Others, however, were charged with felonies for allegedly resisting or assaulting police or participating in the more violent activities of the mob.

James Robert Elliott, of Aurora, an admitted member of the far-right Proud Boys group, was sentenced in 2023 to more than three years in prison for using a flagpole to assault officers trying to hold back the violent mob, later bragging in a text message that he’d “bonked 2 cops.”

Elliott, 27, had been scheduled for release in July, prison records show.

John Banuelos, 31, of Summit, was awaiting trial on felony charges alleging he breached a police line outside the Capitol and fired a gun into the air — one of the only cases nationwide where a firearm was allegedly discharged.

After his March 2024 arrest, Banuelos had been ordered held in custody as a danger to the community.

Prosecutors formally moved to drop his case on Tuesday afternoon, court records show.

One Jan. 6 defendant who will remain behind bars is Shane Jason Woods, of downstate Auburn, who was sentenced in 2023 to 4 ½ years in federal prison for joining a large and belligerent crowd that had congregated on the lower west terrace of the Capitol following Trump’s speech.

Shortly before his sentencing hearing, Woods made a drunken suicide attempt on Interstate 55 near Springfield, according to Sangamon County prosecutors. But instead of killing himself, he took the life of another motorist, Lauren A. Wegner, 35, who was left trapped in a burning vehicle as Woods fled from an Illinois state trooper, prosecutors alleged.

Woods was charged with first-degree murder, aggravated DUI causing death and DUI, stemming from the Nov. 8 wreck. His trial on that case is set for April, court records show.

Chicago Tribune’s Rick Pearson and Ray Long contributed.