Trump vows to pardon January 6 defendants on first day in office

US president-elect Donald Trump said in an interview that aired on Sunday that he would act on his first day in office to pardon rioters involved in the January 6 2021 Capitol attack, further building expectations for a broad granting of clemency.

“I'm going to be acting very quickly, first day,” Trump said on NBC News' Meet the Press with Kristen Welker when asked when he planned to pardon his supporters charged in the attack aimed at overturning his 2020 election defeat.

Trump told Welker there could be “some exceptions” to his pardons if individuals had acted “radical” or “crazy” during the assault, which left more than 140 police officers injured and led to several deaths.

Trump described the prosecutions of his supporters as inherently corrupt and did not rule out pardoning the more than 900 defendants who had pleaded guilty, including those accused of acting violently during the attack.

“I'm going to look at everything. We're going to look at individual cases,” Trump said.

The comments — Trump's most detailed on the issue of pardons since he defeated vice-president Kamala Harris in the November 5 election — will likely add to already high expectations for broad action once Trump is sworn in to office on January 20.

“He continues to put out public message closer and closer to what the J6 community is asking for, which is clemency for all the January 6ers,” Suzzanne Monk, a longtime advocate for defendants charged in the riot, told Reuters.

Hopes among January 6 defendants and their supporters for broad-based clemency have been growing over the past week after President Joe Biden pardoned his son Hunter, marking a reversal from his pledge not to interfere with his son's criminal cases.

Biden said Hunter deserved a pardon because he was the victim of political persecution, an argument Trump will likely use to justify mass pardons. Some Biden critics said his decision would lessen the political cost for Trump.

Kimberly Wehle, a professor at the University of Baltimore School of Law, said she was worried broad amnesty for January 6 defendants would serve to wrongly incentivise the fomenting of unrest or even violence on behalf of a president.

“The idea that he's going to reward people for violating the law on his behalf in connection with an attempt to overthrow legitimate election results, that's not precedented,” said Wehle, author of a recent book on presidential pardon power.

In what has been billed as America's largest-ever criminal investigation, at least 1,572 defendants have been charged for the January 6 attack, with crimes ranging from unlawfully entering restricted grounds to seditious conspiracy and violent assault.

Of that total, more than 1,251 have been convicted or pleaded guilty and 645 have been sentenced to prison, with punishments ranging from a few days to 22 years, according to the latest data from the justice department.

John Pierce, a lawyer who has represented dozens of January 6 defendants, urged Trump to issue a blanket pardon for all who were charged with participating in the riot.

“I don't know how you do it otherwise,” he said, noting it would be difficult to determine which conduct out of the scores of cases that have worked their way through the legal system would merit a pardon.

“I think you would see a lot of unhappy people in the January 6 community” if pardons were granted on a case-by-case basis, he said.

In the NBC interview, Trump lamented those held for long periods of detention, saying they were being kept in “a filthy, disgusting place that shouldn't even be allowed to be open”. He described them as being victims of a “very nasty system”.

Attorney Norm Pattis believes pardons should cover his clients, Zachary Rehl and Joseph Biggs, two former leaders of the Proud Boys militant group sentenced to 15 and 17 years in prison after a jury convicted them of seditious conspiracy.

Pattis said Trump, in promoting the idea the 2020 election had been stolen from him through widespread fraud — an assertion for which there is no evidence — prompted his clients to believe they had to take drastic action.

“He needs to own the fact that he created a tremendous sense of expectation with his claims about a stolen election, and people responded to him as president of the US,” Pattis said.

“I would hope he would pardon broadly.”

Pattis said it was unclear how Trump might draw a line excluding some defendants from clemency due to acts of violence.

Jake Lang, a New York man who was charged with assaulting police officers and has been held in jail before trial, said he was hopeful he would be swept up in a blanket pardon.

“I think on January 20 2025 we are going to see a similar situation to Hunter Biden,” Lang said in a phone interview.

“Everybody's pardoned, full exoneration. Get them all out of prison and get this thing over with so we can start the national healing process.”

Reuters