President-elect Donald Trump said pardoning rioters from the Jan. 6, 2021 insurrection at the Capitol will begin his first day in office in a new interview.
“I’m going to look at everything. We’re going to look at individual cases,” Trump told NBC’s “Meet the Press” in an interview that aired Sunday. “I’m going to be acting very quickly… I’m looking first day.”
The ongoing prosecution of the people who violently entered the U.S. Capitol to try to block Congress’ certification of the 2020 election is the most sprawling federal investigation in U.S. history. Officials say they expect to arrest up to a thousand more people.
Trump has long said he wanted to pardon people convicted of crimes related to the Capitol riot on his first day in office. During his reelection campaign, Trump repeatedly referred to the jailed insurrectionists as political prisoners treated unfairly by an unjust system.
His comments also come after President Joe Biden pardoned his son Hunter Biden who was convicted of three federal gun felonies and federal tax charges earlier this year.
Trump told “Meet the Press” there may be some exceptions to his pardons “if somebody was radical, crazy.” But Trump didn’t rule out pardoning individuals who pleaded guilty, including when host Kristen Welker asked him about people who had admitted to assaulting police officers.
“Because they had no choice,” Trump claimed.
Five people at the riot died of varying causes and at least four police officers who responded to the Capitol riots died by suicide in the months after the incident.
Trump’s “Meet the Press” comments provide the most detailed information on the scope of his proposed pardons. The Trump campaign has been tight-lipped about who exactly the incoming president plans to pardon, with a Trump spokesperson previously telling USA TODAY the president-elect “will make pardon decisions on a case-by-case basis.”
According to the most recent numbers released by the Department of Justice, at least 1,572 defendants have been charged and more than 1,251 have been convicted or pleaded guilty in the attack.
Of those, at least 645 defendants have been sentenced to incarceration, with the longest sentence being 22 years. There are roughly 250 people currently in custody, most of them serving sentences after being convicted. A handful accused of violent crimes are being held in pretrial custody at the order of a federal judge.
