JD Vance Tells Fox That Violent Offenders Won’t Get a J6 Pardon from Trump: ‘Obviously You Shouldn’t Be Pardoned’ if You ‘Committed Violence’
Despite President-elect Donald Trump’s talk of near-blanket pardons for Jan. 6 offenders, Vice President-elect JD Vance seemed to make clear that some of those banking on a get out of jail free card will be out of luck.
Speaking with Shannon Bream on Fox News Sunday, Vance said Trump’s incoming administration “obviously” does not believe violent offenders from the Jan. 6 Capitol riot should receive pardons.
“I think it’s very simple,” Vance told Bream. “If you protested peacefully on January the 6th and you’ve had [Attorney General] Merrick Garland’s Department of Justice treat you like a gang member, you should be pardoned. If you committed violence on that day, obviously you shouldn’t be pardoned.”
Vance did hedge ever-so-slightly by saying “there’s a little bit of a gray area there.” But the vice-president elect delivered a much more clear position than President-elect Trump has on the subject. As recently as Tuesday — during a news conference at Mar-a-Lago — Trump left the door open on pardoning those who attacked law enforcement officers on Jan. 6.
“Will you pardon anyone who attacked a police officer?” Trump was asked.
“Well as you know, the only one that was killed was a beautiful young lady named Ashli Babbitt,” Trump replied — citing the rioter who was killed by a police officer as she was trying to climb through a door that led to the House chamber. “She was killed and there was actually somebody else that was killed, also a MAGA person. But people don’t give it 100% credibility. I’m going to find out about it, and we’re going to find out. But Ashli Babbitt was killed. She was shot. Should have never been shot. She was shot for no reason whatsoever. In fact, they say that she was trying to hold back the crowd, and the crowd was made up of a lot of different people. So we’ll see. But I will tell you this, the person that was killed was Ashli Babbitt.”
Still, despite Vance drawing a clear line that the incoming Trump administration will not pardon violent Jan. 6 offenders, the vice-president elect added he believes “a lot of people” were “prosecuted unfairly”.
“We’re very much committed to seeing the equal administration of law,” Vance said. “And there are a lot of people, we think, in the wake of January the 6th who were prosecuted unfairly. We need to rectify that.”
Watch above, via Fox.
