WASHINGTON – On January 6, 2001, Robert Keith Packer opted to wear a black hoodie adorned with a prominent white Nazi SS skull logo and the phrase “Camp Auschwitz” displayed on top.

Below this was the phrase “WORK BRINGS FREEDOM,” which is an English translation of the notorious Nazi slogan “Arbeit macht frei,” found at Auschwitz and other extermination camps.

On Monday night, as his initial act as president, Donald Trump granted pardons to approximately 1,600 individuals for offenses linked to the January 6 Capitol riots, including Packer, 59, and several suspected Nazi supporters.

Hatchet Speed, who was a naval reserve officer and a supporter of the Proud Boys extremist group, also had his four-year sentence for participating in the Capitol storming revoked. He had expressed admiration for Adolf Hitler to an undercover FBI agent and talked about a plot to “wipe out” Jewish Americans.

Additionally, Trump granted clemency to Army reservist Timothy Louis Hale-Cusanelli, sentenced to 48 months in prison for his role in the Capitol breach, where he urged the crowd to “advance” during the riot before entering the building.

Federal prosecutors labeled Hale-Cusanelli as a white supremacist and Nazi sympathizer. He was known to wear a Hitler-style moustache while working as a contractor at a U.S. Navy base.

The Washington Post reported that 34 of Hale-Cusanelli’s coworkers informed naval investigators that he harbored “extremist or radical views” concerning Jewish individuals, minorities, and women. One officer recounted Hale-Cusanelli saying that “Hitler should have finished the job” in exterminating six million Jews during the Holocaust.

Trump, on Monday, did not clarify the rationale behind his “full, complete and unconditional” pardons for the 1,500 January 6 rioters, including those who fiercely attacked law enforcement with bear spray and other weapons. He referred to them as “patriots” and “hostages,” stating their prosecutions were a “terrible national injustice” inflicted on the American populace.

A spokesperson for Trump declined to comment on the matter.

Packer wore the hoodie ‘because I was cold’

Packer and his Auschwitz hoodie gained widespread attention on social media during and following the events of January 6.

Auschwitz was the largest of the Nazi concentration camps and extermination centers during World War II, according to the museum at the site. Over 1.1 million individuals, including men, women, and children, either perished or succumbed to illness and injury there in occupied Poland.

Packer, with his long beard and hair, is captured in a photograph on a cellphone with others gathered behind him on the Capitol steps. He had traveled to the Capitol with his sister, who provided this information during his sentencing.

Little is known about Packer’s history or his political views.

When questioned by FBI agents why he wore the hoodie, he reportedly answered, “Because I was cold,” based on a federal prosecutor’s filing cited in an NPR article.

Packer was among the first individuals charged by the Justice Department for actions related to January 6. He was arrested eight days later, on January 13, and faced charges for willfully joining and encouraging others in the forcible breach of the Capitol, which disrupted Congress’s formal procedures to confirm Joe Biden’s victory over Trump.

He received a sentence of 75 days in September 2022, with prosecutors also seeking three years of probation.

An ‘incredibly offensive’ message

At 57 years old, Packer chose not to speak before U.S. District Judge Carl Nichols during his sentencing via video conference. However, the judge acknowledged the “incredibly offensive” message displayed on Packer’s sweatshirt prior to issuing the sentence.

“It appears to me that he wore that sweatshirt for a specific purpose. We don’t know that intent because Mr. Packer hasn’t expressed it,” Nichols noted, according to reports.

Prosecutors subsequently revealed that Packer’s hoodie had “STAFF” written on the back and that he wore an “SS” — referring to the Nazi Party’s paramilitary organization — shirt underneath, as mentioned in court proceedings.

Packer “sought to support the overthrow of our democracy and to maintain a dictatorial ruler through force and violence,” Assistant U.S. Attorney Mona Furst told the judge, as reported by NPR.

“He displayed his beliefs through his clothing that day,” Furst added, according to NBC News.

Defense attorney Stephen Brennwald acknowledged that Packer’s clothing choice was “seriously offensive” and “just awful,” but contended that it should not influence his sentencing due to his right to free speech.