Until Monday, even some of Donald Trump’s team did not seem to believe he would release all of those arrested after riots at the US Capitol on 6 January 2021.

“If you committed violence on that day, obviously you shouldn’t be pardoned,” Vice-President JD Vance said a little over a week ago.

A few days later, testifying in front of Congress, Trump’s nominee for Attorney General Pam Bondi agreed with a Democratic senator who asked her to condemn the violence of that day.

“I do not agree with violence against any police officer,” she said, adding that she was willing to look individually at each of the more than 1,500 riot-linked cases.

Trump, however, took a far more sweeping approach to the cases on his first day in office.

He issued a handful of commutations and a blanket pardon that effectively freed all the rioters and erased the work of the largest criminal investigation in US history.

His executive order on Monday gave the rioters and their supporters nearly everything they had been pleading for, short of monetary compensation from the government which some prisoner groups have demanded.

In a news conference on Tuesday at the White House, Trump said: “These people have already served years in prison, and they’ve served them viciously.

“It’s a disgusting prison. It’s been horrible. It’s inhumane. It’s been a terrible, terrible thing.”

There were celebratory scenes outside the Washington DC jail where a number of those arrested over the riot have been held, as well as on social media accounts run by the defendants and their supporters.

The mother of Proud Boys leader Enrique Tarrio, who was released on Tuesday, has posted regular updates about her son.

“Our president gave my son and all the J6ers their lives back!” Zuny Tarrio wrote after learning he would walk free from his 22-year sentence. “They can live again! Breathe fresh air again! Feel the sunshine again!”

One of those released from the Washington DC jail on Tuesday was Rachel Powell, a Pennsylvania woman who was sentenced to more than four years in prison after smashing a window at the Capitol with an ice axe.

Speaking outside the jail, she told the BBC she would now be home in time for her son’s birthday and praised Trump for keeping his promise. “He’s a bigger blessing to me than I could ever imagine,” she said.

Some observers, including policy experts and lawyers representing rioters, were taken aback by the scale of the president’s order.

“The overall consensus was that we would see a differentiation between those who committed violent acts and those who did not,” said Lisa Gilbert, co-president of Public Citizen, a progressive not-for-profit group that opposed the pardons.

“Donald Trump ran for office on law and order, so it’s shocking and upsetting to see him taking action to pardon violent criminals,” she said.

Fourteen people convicted of some of the most serious crimes had their sentences commuted – meaning their offences will remain on the record, but they will still be released from prison.

The justice department, in its last update, said 1,583 people had been arrested or convicted of riot-related crimes.

More than 600 were charged with assaulting, resisting or obstructing police, including around 175 charged with using a weapon or causing serious injury to an officer.

Most of those convicted have served their sentences, or did not receive a jail term at all, but around 250 who are still in prison have started to be released.

And it appears any further investigations – the FBI was still looking for at least 13 suspects and fugitives – will be halted.

Underlining the sweeping finality of his move, Trump named Ed Martin as acting US attorney for Washington DC – the prosecutorial role that has been chiefly responsible for pursuing riot cases.

Martin organised a pro-Trump rally the day before the riot, and has been a staunch critic of the entire investigation.

On the campaign trail, Trump made various statements about the rioters, at times promising blanket pardons but occasionally indicating he might be inclined to keep some of them behind bars.

Supporters of the rioters cheered his blanket pardon on Monday, and have long described the sentences handed out to people they call “J6 hostages” and “political prisoners” as being politically motivated and harsh.

Norm Pattis, a lawyer who defended some of the prisoners, told BBC Newshour that “the notion that somehow this event threatens the republic is overdone”, adding that Confederate rebels were pardoned after the Civil War.

“If we could come together as a country after such a violent act, and after people openly took arms and killed one another… why were we still prosecuting people for criminal trespass four years later after an afternoon’s riot?” he said.

Polls, however, suggest a blanket pardon including for violent convicts is unpopular. A recent Associated Press survey indicated only two in 10 Americans approve of pardoning most of those involved.

Winston Pingeon, a Capitol Police officer who was punched and pepper sprayed that day, told Newshour the pardons were a “slap in the face”.

“It’s really an unprecedented thing to know that these violent felons who were convicted by a jury of their peers for crimes that were largely broadcast for all the country and the world to see are going to walk free,” he said.

In his executive order, Trump explained why he chose to commute the 14 convicts rather than offer them full pardons. The list includes members of the far-right Proud Boys and Oath Keepers militia. Oath Keepers leader Stewart Rhodes was on the list, and was released in the early hours of Tuesday, his lawyer said.

Rhodes, a former US Army paratrooper and Yale-educated lawyer, led the Oath Keepers to Washington in the days before a riot. The group stashed guns in a hotel room across the Potomac River in Virginia, according to trial evidence. Rhodes did not enter the Capitol but directed his members from outside, and was sentenced in 2023 to 18 years in prison.

Rhodes’s lawyer, James Lee Bright, told the BBC that even those close to the cases were surprised by the broad nature of the clemency action and the speed of prisoner releases.

“Despite our relationships with people who are close to the president, they were extremely tight-lipped” before the executive order, Bright said.

Tarrio, the former leader of the Proud Boys, received a full pardon, although five other members of his group were on the commutation list. Tarrio was not in the crowd that day, having been banned from the city. Instead, he communicated with fellow Proud Boys from a hotel in nearby Baltimore.

After Rhodes’s arrest the Oath Keepers mostly ceased operations, while the Proud Boys focused on local protests, particularly against transgender activists and drag story hours. The latter group was also racked with infighting between established members and splinter groups pushing explicitly white nationalist ideas.

Wendy Via, CEO and co-founder of the Global Project Against Hate and Extremism, said newly released militia members may try to continue their activities, putting far-right groups that largely dissipated back into the spotlight.

On Monday dozens of Proud Boys were seen marching around Washington to celebrate the inauguration.

“Do the Proud Boys start trying to centralise the organisation again, like it was in 2021? That’s going to be a big question,” Ms Via said.

“The fallout from these pardons is that Trump has sent a message that violence is a viable tool for change, as long as it’s on his side,” she added.

With additional reporting from Regan Morris and Emma Vardy

President Donald Trump sought to maintain his inaugural momentum on his second day in office, defending the pardons for Capitol Hill riot defendants, planning a purge of DEI programmes and announcing an artificial intelligence infrastructure deal.

On Tuesday, Trump also threatened economic actions against Russia and China as his choice for top US diplomat, Secretary of State Marco Rubio, arrived at the State Department for his first day on the job.

He also met congressional Republicans at the White House before appearing with tech CEOs to announce a joint venture with OpenAI, Oracle and SoftBank to invest billions in artificial intelligence infrastructure.

As Trump’s team settles in, other officials who worked under the Biden administration are expected to continue leaving in droves.

At his first news conference of the new administration, Trump discussed his decision to release defendants in the 6 January 2021 riot at the Capitol, when his supporters sought to block Joe Biden from taking the White House.

The more than 1,500 people he pardoned on Monday “spent years in jail” while “murderers don’t even go to jail in this country,” Trump said.

He also told reporters that he is considering imposing a 10% tariff on imports of Chinese-made goods as soon as February.

China is sending fentanyl – an opioid fuelling drug crises around the world – to the US, via Mexico and Canada, he explained.

His announcement followed threats to levy import taxes of 25% on Mexico and Canada, accusing them of allowing undocumented migrants and drugs into America.

Trump is considering issuing further sanctions against Russia, he said, if President Vladimir Putin refuses to negotiate a ceasefire in Ukraine.

Trump said that during a phone call with Chinese President Xi Jinping, he pressed China to do more to intervene to stop the war.

“He’s not done very much on that… I said, ‘You ought to get it settled.’ We did discuss it,” he said.

At an inaugural prayer service earlier in the day, the Episcopal bishop of Washington DC looked at him during her sermon and appealed to him to “have mercy” for immigrants, and gay and transgender youth.

Trump later told reporters that he “didn’t think it was a good service” and that they “could do much better”.

At Trump’s first gathering with Republican leaders at the White House, the group discussed legislative strategy and possibly using recess appointments to confirm Cabinet nominees who are unable to get through the normal Senate confirmation process.

On the subject of immigration, the sweeping raids and deportations Trump vowed would begin the first day of his presidency have yet to ramp up, however the administration has changed several rules designed to limit the flow of migration.

The Department of Homeland Security announced that it was rescinding a rule preventing immigration agents from conducting raids at “sensitive locations”, including schools, churches and hospitals.

Four top officials at the Justice Department’s Executive Office of Immigration Review, which oversees US immigration courts, were among those laid off on Tuesday as the Trump administration.

Meanwhile, all federal employees serving in roles related to DEI (diversity, equity and inclusion), will be placed on paid leave on Wednesday, according to White House Press Secretary Karoline Leavitt.

A memo obtained through BBC’s news partner CBS on Tuesday included a template email to affected employees, saying that the DEI programs “divided Americans by race, wasted taxpayer dollars, and resulted in shameful discrimination”.

As some of Trump’s high-profile pardons are released from prison, he also issued a new pardon for another well known supporter.

Ross Ulbricht, who operated Silk Road, the deep web marketplace where illegal drugs were sold, and was active in the Libertarian movement, received a full and unconditional pardon.

“The scum that worked to convict him were some of the same lunatics who were involved in the modern day weaponization of government against me,” Trump posted on his Truth Social platform.

Ulbricht was convicted in 2015 in New York in a narcotics and money laundering conspiracy, and sentenced to life in prison.

CCTV and cameras are not uncommon on mental health wards, used with the intention of keeping patients safe. But some say that new technology, where cameras also monitor their pulse and breathing in their bedrooms, is adding to their sense of paranoia and in some cases making them more unwell.

The Royal College of Psychiatrists and the mental health charity Rethink have now said they want to see the rollout of the technology paused.

“It’s the sense big brother is always watching you – that’s really, really scary as a mental health patient, especially if you are experiencing paranoia,” Hat, 27, said.

“It also takes away your privacy and dignity which has already been reduced.”

Sophina, Nell and Hat have all spent time on mental health wards.

Now they are raising concerns about the use of camera surveillance placed in their bedrooms without explicit consent and want to see the use of it stopped.

“It felt like this invisible person was following me. It became really frightening and I got really unwell. I didn’t feel safe sleeping in bed with a camera… not knowing who was watching me or when,” Sophina said.

The technology – called Oxevision – can also monitor a patient’s pulse and breathing, and its makers said it has “been proven” to help keep them safe, but some have told BBC West Investigations they felt so frightened they slept in corridors, bathrooms and even outside.

Hat, who is from Weston-super-Mare and is now living in Exeter, is part of a campaign called Stop Oxevision.

Along with Sophina, 28, from the West Midlands, they have been contacted by dozens of others wanting to share their experiences.

“People have said that they’ve been afraid to sleep in their own beds,” Hat said.

“They’ve been sleeping on the floor of the bathroom. They’ve been sleeping under a desk or out in communal areas – just because they’re too afraid of the camera.

“For a lot of people when they are really unwell that can relate to fears or trauma around surveillance – whether that is paranoia or relates to past trauma, like sexual or domestic abuse.”

Nell, 36, from Brighton, said her experience of camera surveillance was “dehumanising” and “isolating”.

“It’s a really understandable thing to assume that adding an extra level of surveillance would be safety, but it’s really not. Nobody actually came into the room to engage with me.”

Oxevision is now used in a number of mental health hospitals across England.

Infrared cameras monitor patients while they are in their bedrooms, and the technology is designed to measure a pulse, breathing rate and movement to confirm a patient is safe, meaning fewer one-to-one observations are needed.

Hospital staff are not viewing the footage all the time – but can see it for short periods and if a risk is detected, an alert will sound and staff can attend to the patient immediately.

But Hat said the campaign group has been told hospitals are not always obtaining consent from patients and their families, and believes the technology is not always being used correctly, impacting on their privacy.

“We’ve heard quite a lot of places where the monitors can be seen [from] out in the corridors and out in the garden, so there’s nothing to stop other patients seeing that,” they said.

And Hat, Nell and Sophina are not alone in their concerns.

The ongoing Lampard inquiry into mental health deaths in Essex has also highlighted potential issues with the technology.

As part of its wider scope, it heard from Tammy Smith, the mother of Sophie Alderman, who believes Oxevision may have harmed her daughter’s mental health before her death in 2022.

The inquiry was told Sophie, 27, “felt a deep discomfort around cameras”, which triggered acute paranoia, believing she was under surveillance by the government.

Mrs Smith said she was “deeply concerned that the continual presence of an Oxevision camera in Sophie’s room” would have therefore caused her “real and significant distress”.

Consultant clinical psychologist, Dr Jay Watts, has been a patient in a mental health hospital and called the use of Oxevision “a scandal”.

“It is really playing on one of the worst things that can happen when we’re unwell, feeling that we’re being surveyed for someone else’s gain rather than what matters most and what is necessary most for us,” she said.

She said the technology was “attractive” to NHS managers because “it’s a way to save money”.

“Mental health is still very, very much the kind of pariah in terms of being underfunded and being under thought about, and really in terms of being dehumanised in a way that we don’t find elsewhere,” she added.

The Royal College of Psychiatrists and the mental health charity Rethink have also said they want to see the rollout of the technology paused.

“Video monitoring technology varies from CCTV to systems which electronically track vital signs and may have a positive role to play as part of this agenda,” a Royal College of Psychiatrists spokesperson said.

“However, before any further rollout of video monitoring technology is considered, we believe there needs to be significant research undertaken that is independently accredited and co-produced with patients, their carers and families.”

Rethink deputy chief executive, Brian Dow, said any form of surveillance must be done with “the explicit, clear and continued consent of patients… otherwise it risks doing more harm than good”.

“We think the technology should be paused until we have that framework which guides the use and the application of those technologies because that is what I think will provide the comfort to patients, to families and professionals working in that setting,” he added.

NHS England has said it has instructed mental health trusts to review its use of camera surveillance and will update its guidance in the coming months.

In response to the concerns, Oxehealth, which makes the technology, said: “The Oxevision platform, which features regulated medical device software, has been proven to help clinical teams enhance safety while providing therapeutic, personalised care to their patients.

“To support healthcare providers, national guidelines have been established to guide the implementation and effective use of the platform.”

But for Hat, Nell and Sophina that doesn’t go far enough.

“We totally understand the need to save money in the NHS but this absolutely isn’t the way to do it,” Hat said.