On his first day back at the White House next month, Donald Trump plans to issue pardons for all January 6 defendants.
The president-elect said it’s a high priority for him to get those who rioted at the Capitol in 2021 out of where they are held in prisons and jails because they have been there for years while he ran for a second term.
‘I’m going to be acting very quickly,’ Trump told NBC News in his first post-victory interview aired on Sunday.
He insisted: ‘Yeah, I’m looking first day.’
‘You’re going to issue these pardons?’ Meet the Press host Kristen Welker clarified.
‘These people have been there, how long is it? Three, four years,’ Trump lamented.
‘They’ve been in there for years. And they’re in a filthy, disgusting place that shouldn’t even be allowed to be open,’ he added.
The mass pardons could see more than 500 people released from prisons and another nearly 1,000 cases dismissed.
Pardon all J6 defendants on Day 1! pic.twitter.com/xlzQb27SDD
— Suburban Black Man 🇺🇸 (@niceblackdude) December 8, 2024
Trump suggested right after President Joe Biden pardoned his son Hunter last weekend that he would also look to commute sentences and issue pardons for the defendants connected to and those convicted over the January 6 Capitol riot.
He now confirmed in his interview with NBC News that he will take action immediately after taking his oath of office in January.
Trump also said in his sit-down that members of the House select committee that investigated the January 6 attack ‘should be in jail’ after they concluded that the president-elect was responsible for the riot.
The nine-member committee, which released its final report day before Christmas in December 2022, included two Republicans who are no longer in Congress: Former Reps. Liz Cheney and Adam Kinzinger.
It concluded: ‘The central cause of January 6th was one man, former President Donald Trump, who many others followed. None of the events of January 6th would have happened without him.’
As of August, 944 defendants had their cases adjudicated and received sentences for their activity on January 6, 2021, according to the Justice Department.
And of those almost 1,000 people, 562 were sentenced to incarceration of varying periods.
More than 1,488 defendants were charged in nearly all 50 states and the District of Columbia in both District and Superior Court.
The DOJ claimed in August that nearly 900 people pleaded guilty to federal crimes and will face incarceration at sentencing, if they haven’t already.
Of the 894 pleas, 288 were felonies and 606 misdemeanors.
Many of the charges were related to assaulting law enforcement officers or obstructing, impeding or interfering with law enforcement officers during civil disorder.
At least 180 of those charged with those crimes have been sentenced to prison terms up to 151 months – or nearly 12-and-a-half years.
Donald Trump will be inaugurated on Monday, January 20, 2025 and is likely to ger right to work.
He made several campaign promises about his actions on his first day back in the Oval Office.
This now includes his vow to pardon the January 6 rioters who were persecuted for their actions at the Capitol as Trump’s first term was coming to an end in the midst of widespread claims of voter fraud in 2020 and Democrats’ ‘stealing’ the election.
