Trump Supporters Hold "Stop The Steal" Rally In DC Amid Ratification Of Presidential Election. (Photo: Getty Images/Brent Stirton)

As 82nd Airborne veteran Scott Peoples put it in a recent op-ed for NC Newsline, President Trump’s decision to pardon participants in the deadly January 6, 2021 insurrection — even those who violently assaulted police officers — was a low point in the history of the American presidency.

Even many conservative Trump supporters were appalled.

Sadly, however, one prominent conservative voice in North Carolina — a group that calls itself independent and libertarian — has thrown in with the rioters.

In a fawning article in its newsletter, the Carolina Journal, the Raleigh-based John Locke Foundation, allowed one of the violent leaders of the assault — a North Carolina man who was later arrested for driving while impaired while on pre-trial release and found to be transporting an assault rifle and 60 rounds of ammunition — to portray himself as a victim and defender of quote “freedom.”

The bottom line: The insurrectionists who violently invaded our Capitol were not heroes but criminals. And as with Trump’s pardons, those who promote their lies and delusions help undermine all of our freedoms.

For NC Newsline, I’m Rob Schofield.