All of the top Republican presidential candidates are pledging to grant pardons to hundreds of suspects rounded up and jailed in the Justice Department’s prosecution of the Jan. 6 Capitol riot.
While President Joe Biden has followed a lock-them-up-and-throw-away-the-key approach to the suspects, all five of the leading GOP candidates plan to pardon those facing nonviolent charges, one as early as “day one” of his presidency.
In a newly released video, the group Look Ahead America, which has held rallies for “J6” suspects, revealed the answers its volunteers received from candidates on the campaign trail when asked what they would do if elected president.
The answers from former President Donald Trump, former U.S. Ambassador to the United Nations Nikki Haley, businessman Vivek Ramaswamy, Gov. Ron DeSantis (R-FL), and former Arkansas Gov. Asa Hutchinson varied, but all offered promises of help.
“I want to point out something very important,” Look Ahead America Executive Director Matt Braynard said. “Not a single one of these candidates said, ‘Just lock them up and throw away the key, I don’t care.’ All of them gave an answer that at least attempted to be somewhat sympathetic to the people who care about this issue.”
Volunteer “reporters” asked all the candidates but Trump a question about how they would handle the rioters, especially those not charged with violence. For example, the mother of Ashli Babbitt, the lone protester shot and killed by a U.S. Capitol Police officer inside the Capitol that day, joined a volunteer in asking Hutchinson what he would do.
Braynard said getting to Trump through large crowds was impossible, but he did show the former president’s answer given during a CNN town hall.
The answers:
Nikki Haley: “President Trump said it was a beautiful day. I think it was a terrible day,” she said. Haley said those who were violent and caused damage should be charged but not those who didn’t and were on the Capitol grounds to support Trump. She also condemned holding suspects without charging them and delaying court action. “I think they should have their day in court. If they committed a crime, I think they should be held accountable. If they didn’t commit a crime, I think they should be let go.”
Ron DeSantis: “When I come in, we’re going to do one standard of justice for everybody. We will use Article Two powers, including pardons and clemency, as people who are mistreated. We’re going to have people that can apply. And anyone that demonstrates that type of mistreatment, we would want to make sure that we even the scales of justice, but beyond that, too, we’re going to clean house and the DOJ and the FBI,” he said. DeSantis said the Justice Department has been “weaponized” to target Jan. 6 rioters while ignoring Black Lives Matter rioters.
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Asa Hutchinson: “I would handle any pardon applications just as I did as governor, which I looked at individually. I would make sure that they were reviewed by my team, and they would look at it in terms of fairness, in terms of justice and equal treatment, and, when appropriate, in terms of mercy. So each of them would be looked at individually,” he said.
Vivek Ramaswamy: “I will deliver to every peaceful J6 protester a pardon on Jan. 20, 2025,” he said. “And those who have been held without an actual trial or held without even being charged deserve recompense from a government that has wronged them.”
Donald Trump: He also said the Justice Department was handling the Jan. 6 suspects and those linked to BLM riots differently. He said, “You have two standards of justice in this country, and what they’ve done, and I love that question, because what they’ve done to so many people is nothing, nothing. And then, what they’ve done to these people, they persecuted these people. And yeah, my answer is, I am most likely, if I get it, I will most likely, I would say, it will be a large portion of them” pardoned.