Trump defends Jan. 6 pardons in first interview

President Donald Trump reaffirmed his decision to pardon over 1,000 defendants arrested for their alleged roles in the Jan. 6 Capitol riots during an interview with Sean Hannity released Wednesday. The president argued that the defendants were exercising their right to protest an election that they believed was rigged. He insisted that prisoners were unfairly subjected to several years of poor conditions and solitary confinement. Authorities treated these protesters like hardened criminals when many of the defendants were really innocent, Trump alleged. Trump also noted that the pardons fulfilled his campaign promise of freeing the accused rioters soon after his inauguration.

When questioned about pardoning defendants accused or convicted of assaulting police, Trump insisted that many of the defendants had already served years in prison, despite committing relatively minor crimes that were severely misrepresented by the media. The president further implied that rioters were unfairly targeted for their political beliefs. Criminals who commit serious crimes in cities across America are never caught, but the Biden administration continued tracking down protesters years after the fact, Trump said.

How are constituents reacting? Many GOP lawmakers appeared to struggle with the pardons. Sen. Thom Tillis, R- N.C., could not support the pardons earlier this week, noting that issuing full pardons to Capitol protesters could breed safety concerns, according to reporting by Politico. Senate Majority Leader John Thune, R-S.D., declined to comment when asked by Politico about the pardons by saying he hadn’t read the executive order yet and suggested that former President Joe Biden opened the door to the pardons.

However several Republicans openly took issue with the president’s decision. Assaulting a police officer is very serious and there needs to be punishment, said Sen. James Lankford, R-Ok, according to CNN. Sen. Lisa Murkowski, R-Alaska, said the pardons disappointed her, and that she was concerned about the type of message it would send to law enforcement, CNN reported.

How have Capitol police officers reacted? Capitol police officer Brian Sicknick died one day after the attack. Medical examiners determined Sicknick’s death as natural causes but alleged that the extreme stress the day before his death contributed to the clot that triggered two strokes. Rioters attacked Sicknick with pepper spray and Capitol police considered his death in the line of duty, according to a previous Capitol police statement. Sicknick’s family described the pardoning of the attackers as a reversal of court-ordered justice. They hope that the true memory of what happened that day will still survive despite partisan agendas, according to the statement reported by CBS.

Dig deeper: Read my report on pro-life activists pushing for Trump to issue more pardons to FACE Act defendants.