Vance says Capitol rioters guilty of violence should not be pardoned | Trump’s administration

Donald Trump supporters who carried out violence during the US Capitol attack in early January 2021 should not be pardoned by him after he begins his second presidency, JD Vance said on Sunday.

The future deputy chairman’s remarks regarding Fox News Sunday with host Shannon Bream diverging slightly from an earlier pledge by Trump to consider pardoning even those who admitted to assaulting police officers, saying “a very corrupt system” gave them “no choice.”

“Obviously, if you committed violence that day, you will not be pardoned,” Vance told Bream.

But later off-air, Vance assured that clemency remained on the table for at least some convicted in the Jan. 6, 2021, attack, saying the second Trump administration was concerned about “people who got a garbage trial” and were “unfairly locked up”.

More than 1,200 people have been convicted in connection with an attack on Congress that has been linked to several deaths — including officer suicides — and was intended to keep Trump in the Oval Office after he lost re-election in 2020 to Joe Biden .

After he won a second term as president by defeating Kamala Harris in the Nov. 5 election, Trump went on NBC News and said one of his first acts in office would be to free convicted Capitol attackers who were tried in a “very ugly system”.

“The system is a very corrupt system,” said Trump, who himself was convicted in May in New York state court on charges of criminally falsifying business records to hide hush money payments to adult film actor Stormy Daniels. “And … their whole lives have been destroyed.”

Appearing on Fox in what was billed as Vance’s first television interview since the November race, Trump’s running mate said those who “peacefully protested … should be pardoned.” He made it a point to add that those who “committed violence that day, obviously” should not receive the same benefit.

Some of Trump’s staunchest supporters reacted angrily to Vance’s comments as their Jan. 20 inauguration loomed.

One – far-right provocateur Nicholas Fuentes – published a social media post that appeared to allude to how Trump avoided significant punishment in the Daniels case as well as rulings by the conservative-dominated US Supreme Court that undermined efforts to prosecute the president-elect for The Capitol Attack.

“If Trump got a get out of jail free card, so should EVERY ONE of his supporters who rallied for him on January 6th,” Fuentes wrote on social media.

Luke Lints, who pleaded guilty to interfering with law enforcement during a civil disorder case on the day of the Capitol attack, wrote separately on social media: “I’m completely emotionally confused right now.”

Vance subsequently sought to clarify his comments on social media, saying he and Trump would weigh all Jan. 6 sentences for clemency individually — regardless of whether the underlying offenses were violent.

“We care about people wrongfully locked up,” Vance wrote in part. “That includes people who got a trash case.”