President-elect Donald Trump said he is looking to issue pardons to his supporters involved in the attacks on the U.S. Capitol on Jan. 6 as soon as his first day in office, saying those incarcerated are “living in hell.”
Trump’s comments, the most sweeping he’s made since winning the 2024 election, came during an exclusive interview with “Meet the Press” moderator Kristen Welker. He also said that he will not 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, adding 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.”
Trump said that there “may be some exceptions” to his pardons “if somebody was radical, crazy” and pointed to some debunked claims about anti-Trump elements and law enforcement operatives infiltrating 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 periods of incarceration ranging from a few days to 22 years in federal lockup. There are roughly 250 people currently in custody, most of them serving sentences after being convicted. A handful are being held in pretrial custody at the order of a federal judge.
Trump didn’t rule out pardoning individuals who had pleaded guilty, including when Welker asked him about those who had admitted to assaulting police officers.
“Because they had no choice,” Trump said.
Asked about the more than 900 others who had pleaded guilty in connection to the attack but were not 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.”
The crimes that have been charged range from unlawful parading to seditious conspiracy in the sprawling Jan. 6 investigation that included rioters captured on video committing assaults on officers, and who admitted under oath that they’d done so. Jan. 6 defendants in custody include Proud Boys and Oath Keeper 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 that he would not direct Pam Bondi, his nominee to be the next 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 said he would not 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, a vocal Trump critic who left Congress, and Democrat Bennie Thompson, who chaired the committee, saying they had destroyed the evidence collected in their investigation and “those people committed a major crime.”
Transcripts and videos of some of the more than 1,000 witnesses interviewed by the committees have been preserved by the committee and posted online. Some interviews that contained 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, 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 would not direct his appointees to arrest them.
Trump’s view on DOJ, FBI
The interview offers an in-depth look at Trump’s thoughts on the Justice Department and FBI.
Trump — who faced four separate criminal cases and was the first former U.S. 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 towards the justice system, but insisted he was looking forward.
“I’m not looking to go back into the past,” Trump said when 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 that he would appoint a special prosecutor to investigate Biden, the president-elect said he did not plan to do so “unless I find something that I think is reasonable” and said that any such move would “be Pam Bondi’s decision, and, to a different extent, Kash Patel,” his pick for FBI chief.
FBI Director Chris Wray — the Republican who Trump appointed to head the bureau during his first term after he fired former FBI Director James Comey — would need to be fired or resign for Patel to take his place. Under a post-Watergate reform, FBI directors have ten-year terms, though only one FBI director — former director Robert Mueller, who ultimately served 12 years and later went on to become 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 Mar-a-Lago during the investigation of Trump’s handling of classified documents that 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 that 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 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, a federal judge who was appointed by then-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 imposing 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.
This article was originally published on NBCNews.com
