Democratic South Carolina Rep. Jim Clyburn suggested Monday that he could support President-elect Donald Trump pardoning certain Jan. 6, 2021 Capitol riot participants.
During a Sunday interview on “Meet the Press,” Trump stated he intends to pardon the protesters on the first day of his second presidential term. Clyburn, on “CNN News Central,” condemned Trump’s actions surrounding the riot and the conduct of some protesters, but acknowledged that pardons might be warranted for individuals who “got caught up” due to “emotions.”
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“I think that it’s the president’s prerogative to pardon whomever he wishes to pardon. That’s up to the president,” Clyburn said. “I favor the pardon system … It ought to be used to forgive and to provide a second chance. So if you go a case-by-case basis, you look at all of those people, some people may have gotten caught up in the emotions and maybe a pardon for them would be okay.”
“But if you’re using the American flag, plunging it at the enforcement officers, you have injured a law enforcement officer and you’re spraying whatever the stuff was they were spraying on people, those people should not be pardoned,” he continued. “And so yes, go case-by-case and then maybe some people got caught up and give them a pardon, but a blanket pardon to everybody irrespective, no, I do not agree with that.”
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CNN presidential historian Tim Naftali recently asserted that President Joe Biden’s pardon of his son Hunter “helps justify” Trump’s anticipated pardon of the Jan. 6 protesters.
“I fear that though President-elect Trump didn’t need an excuse to engage in wide-scale pardoning, for example, of the January 6th — those that have [been] convicted for crimes on January 6th or as a result of January 6th — this just I think helps justify it for President-elect Trump,” he said.
Trump repeatedly pledged to pardon the Jan. 6 protesters during his 2024 presidential campaign. He said during a May 2023 CNN town hall that he would pardon a “large portion” of them “very early on” in his second administration.
“I am inclined to pardon many of them. I can’t say for every single one because a couple of them probably they got out of control, but, you know, when you look at Antifa, what they’ve done to Portland, and if you look at Antifa, look at what they’ve done to Minneapolis and so many other – so many other places, look at what they did to Seattle,” Trump said at the time. “And BLM — BLM, many people were killed.”
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“These people – I’m not trying to justify anything, but you have two standards of justice of this country, and … what they’ve done to so many people is nothing — nothing,” he added. “And then what they’ve done to these people — they’ve persecuted these people.”
Over 1,500 defendants have faced charges for their involvement in the riot as of October, according to the Department of Justice. Over 1,000 have already faced sentencing, including 645 who have received jail time and 143 receiving home confinement.
Clyburn also revealed on Thursday that he has urged Biden’s staff to push the president to issue a “preemptive” pardon for Trump.
“I have not urged the president directly, but I did have that discussion with the members of his staff that I thought he ought to do that,” Clyburn said. “I think we need to clear the air in this country … I think that we are trying to run a government on behalf of all the people of this country, and if we spend all of our time going forward pursuing Trump or Trump pursuing [Former Wyoming Republican Rep.] Liz Cheney, [special counsel] Jack Smith, Dr. [Anthony] Fauci, that is what we need to get off the table.”
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First published by the Daily Caller News Foundation.