President-elect Donald Trump said he is looking to pardon his supporters involved in the attack on the U.S. Capitol on Jan. 6, 2021, as soon as his first day in office, saying those incarcerated are “living in hell.”
Trump made the comments, his most sweeping since he won the election, in an exclusive interview with NBC News’ “Meet the Press” moderator Kristen Welker. He also said he won’t seek to turn the Justice Department on his political foes and warned that some members of the House committee that investigated the Jan. 6 attack “should go to jail.”
On his first day in office, Trump said, he will bring legal relief to the Jan. 6 rioters who he said have been put through a “very nasty system.”
“I’m going to be acting very quickly. First day,” Trump said, saying later about their imprisonment, “They’ve been in there for years, and they’re in a filthy, disgusting place that shouldn’t even be allowed to be open.”
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Trump said there “may be some exceptions” to his pardons “if somebody was radical, crazy,” and pointed to some debunked claims that anti-Trump elements and law enforcement operatives infiltrated the crowd.
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 ranging from a few days to 22 years in federal lockup. About 250 people are in custody, most of them serving sentences after having been convicted. A handful are being held in pretrial custody at the order of a federal judge.
Trump didn’t rule out pardoning people who had pleaded guilty, even when Welker asked him about those who had admitted assaulting police officers.
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“Because they had no choice,” Trump said.
Asked about the more than 900 other people who had pleaded guilty in connection to the attack but weren’t accused of assaulting officers, Trump suggested that they had been pressured unfairly into taking guilty pleas.
“I know the system. The system’s a very corrupt system,” Trump said. “They say to a guy, ‘You’re going to go to jail for two years or for 30 years.’ And these guys are looking, their whole lives have been destroyed. For two years, they’ve been destroyed. But the system is a very nasty system.”
Charges have ranged from unlawful parading to seditious conspiracy in the sprawling Jan. 6 investigation, which included rioters captured on video committing assaults on officers and those who admitted under oath that they’d done so. Jan. 6 defendants in custody include Proud Boys and Oath Keepers convicted of seditious conspiracy, a Jan. 6 defendant recently convicted of plotting to kill the FBI special agents who investigated him, another charged with firing gunshots into the air during the attack and another arrested outside former President Barack Obama’s home after Trump posted a screenshot that included the address.
Trump said he wouldn’t direct Pam Bondi, whom he has said he will nominate for attorney general, to investigate special counsel Jack Smith, who brought two separate federal cases against Trump that were ultimately dropped after the election. Trump called Smith “deranged” and said he thinks he is “very corrupt.” Ultimately, he said, he’d leave those decisions to Bondi, and he said he wouldn’t direct her to prosecute Smith.
“I want her to do what she wants to do,” Trump said. “I’m not going to instruct her to do it.”
Trump claimed that members of the House Jan. 6 committee had “lied” and “destroyed a whole year and a half worth of testimony.”
He singled out Republican Liz Cheney, of Wyoming, a vocal Trump critic who left Congress, and Democrat Bennie Thompson, of Mississippi, who chaired the committee, saying that they had destroyed the evidence collected in their investigation and that “those people committed a major crime.”
Cheney said in a statement released Sunday that Trump "lied about the January 6th Select Committee" when he said committee members "should go to jail."
"There is no conceivably appropriate factual or constitutional basis for what Donald Trump is suggesting — a Justice Department investigation of the work of a congressional committee — and any lawyer who attempts to pursue that course would quickly find themselves engaged in sanctionable conduct," Cheney added.
Cheney called for the release of materials gathered by Smith during his investigation, adding, "Ultimately, Congress should require that all that material be publicly released so all Americans can see Donald Trump for who he genuinely is and fully understand his role in this terrible period in our nation’s history."
The committee has preserved transcripts and videos of some of the more than 1,000 witness interviews and posted them online. Some interviews that included private and sensitive information were sent to the White House and the Department of Homeland Security for review to ensure that certain information wasn’t released improperly. Those transcripts remain with the agency, and the White House and a separate House committee continue to have access.
“Honestly, they should go to jail,” Trump said about the committee members, insisting he wouldn’t direct his appointees to arrest them.
Trump’s view of DOJ, FBI
The interview offers an in-depth look at Trump’s thoughts about the Justice Department and FBI.
Trump — who faced four separate criminal cases and was the first former president to be convicted of a crime after a New York jury found him guilty of 34 felony counts in the Stormy Daniels hush money case — expressed deep grievances toward the justice system but insisted he was looking forward.
“I’m not looking to go back into the past,” he said when he was asked whether he would go after outgoing President Joe Biden. “I’m looking to make our country successful. Retribution will be through success.”
While Trump had previously said he would appoint a special prosecutor to investigate Biden, he said that he didn’t plan to do so “unless I find something that I think is reasonable” and that any such move would “be Pam Bondi’s decision and, to a different extent, Kash Patel,” his pick for FBI director.
FBI Director Christopher Wray — the Republican whom Trump appointed during his first term after he fired James Comey — would need to resign or be fired for Patel to take his place. Under a post-Watergate reform, FBI directors have 10-year terms, though only one FBI director — Robert Mueller, who ultimately served 12 years and went on to become the special counsel investigating Trump’s 2016 campaign and Russian interference in that election — made it that long.
Trump said he wasn’t “thrilled” with Wray because he “invaded my home,” referring to the search of his Mar-a-Lago compound in Florida during the investigation of Trump’s handling of classified documents, which found boxes of records in the resort, including some stored in a bathroom.
“I’m suing the country over it. He invaded Mar-a-Lago,” Trump said. “I’m very unhappy with the things he — he’s done, and crime is at an all-time high.” (Law enforcement data shows a “historic” drop in crime.) Trump indicated Wray would be fired if he didn’t resign.
Asked about a list of 60 members whom Patel proclaimed to be members of the so-called deep state in his book, Trump said Patel would “do what he thinks is right” if he were confirmed, adding that he thought Patel would have an “obligation” to investigate if “somebody was dishonest or crooked or a corrupt politician.”
There are still more than 40 days until Trump takes office, and Justice Department prosecutors continue to press cases against individual rioters, but the coming administration change hasn’t gone unnoticed.
On Friday, U.S. District Judge Royce Lamberth, who was appointed by President Ronald Reagan, stressed the importance of “truth and justice, law and order,” before he sentenced a Jan. 6 defendant to a year in prison. After he imposed the sentence, Lamberth ordered Philip Grillo to be taken into custody.
“Trump’s gonna pardon me,” Grillo said as he removed his belt and surrendered.
Kelly O'Donnell contributed.
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