Trump Says He Plans To Pardon Jan. 6 Rioters On Day One: Meet the Press

President-elect Donald Trump plans to pardon Jan. 6 rioters on his first day back in the White House, according to a new exclusive interview with NBC’s Kristen Welker.

The Meet the Press host sat down with the former and future president on Friday, before he traveled to Paris to meet with other world leaders. In the interview, which aired Sunday morning, Trump said he would “be acting very quickly” for the hundreds of individuals who participated in the United States Capitol attack in 2021.

“I’m looking first day,” Trump said when Welker asked when he planned on granting clemency to the more than 900 people who pleaded guilty to crimes. “These people have been there, how long has it been, three or four years, you know, by the way, they’ve been in there for years. And they’re in a filthy, disgusting place that shouldn’t even be allowed to be open.”

Trump has previously referred to some Jan. 6 rioters as “hostages” being mistreated by the Justice Department—though it’s unclear exactly who he is speaking about.

According to reporting from NBC News, “More than 1,350 people have been charged in connection with the Jan. 6 attack, and prosecutors have secured more than 950 convictions.” Low-level defendants, the network found, “routinely receive sentences of probation, but about 500 have received periods of incarceration. The overwhelming majority of those charged have been released before trial.” NBC News identified just 15 defendants who have not been convicted or entered a plea and are currently incarcerated.

Demonstrators attempt to breach the U.S. Capitol after they earlier stormed the building in Washington, D.C. on Jan. 6, 2021.

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A bipartisan Senate report released in June of 2021 found that at least seven people died in connection with the insurrection at the Capitol. A month after that report was released, two Metropolitan Police officers—Gunther Hashida and Kyle DeFreytag—died by suicide in July. “About 150 officers from the Capitol Police, the Metropolitan Police Department, and local agencies were injured, and hundreds of workers were traumatized by the mob,” per reporting from the New York Times. The attack caused, according to a report from October of 2022, an estimated 2.8 million dollars in damages to the Capitol building and its grounds, along with costs borne by the Capitol police.

During their interview, Welker also asked the president-elect about the Jan. 6 Committee, the bipartisan panel tasked with investigating the events that took place that day. Their final 845-page report called on Congress to ban Trump from holding public office ever again and noted, on the top of the executive summary, that “None of the events of Jan. 6 would have happened without him.”

“For what they did, honestly, they should go to jail,” Trump said of the committee. Welker pressed him, asking about individual members of the panel, “So you think Liz Cheney should go to jail? Everyone on the committee, you think?”

“I think everyone on the committee,” Trump answered, later claiming he wouldn’t direct his FBI director or attorney general to send them to jail. But, he added, “I think they’ll have to look at that.”

President Joe Biden may be considering preemptive pardons for members of the J6 committee, including senator-elect Adam Schiff of California and former GOP Representative Liz Cheney of Wyoming, according to reporting from Politico Magazine based on senior Democrats familiar with the discussions.

Welker and Trump’s chat ranged from talks of exactly how the president-elect hopes to deport hoards of immigrants, a promise he centered his campaign on, to the incoming administration’s “concepts of a plan” for providing healthcare to millions of Americans. His answers were riddled with falsehoods and misrepresentations on the Capitol attack, immigrants bringing crime to the US, who will bear the brunt of increased tariffs on goods, and vaccine safety for children. Despite his claims during the interview, the Jan. 6 committee held that they did not destroy evidence, crime broadly is down, the cost of tariffs often does fall on consumers, and there is no evidence of a link between vaccines and autism in kids.

U.S. President Donald Trump speaks during a “Save America Rally” near the White House in Washington, D.C. on Jan. 6, 2021.

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Trump’s assertion that he’ll pardon J6 rioters comes as this group of people have reportedly felt emboldened following the November election and their candidate’s victory.

“A vibe shift sparked by Trump’s imminent takeover of Washington has begun seeping into the marble halls of the federal courthouse, where nearly 1,600 members of the Jan. 6 mob have faced charges,” Politico’s Kyle Cheney and Josh Gerstein reported on Friday. Some defendants, they write, “have begun to feel the momentum swing in their favor, often trading sentiments of remorse in favor of defiance and confidence that Trump will soon swoop in to spare them any prison time.”

One such defendant, Philip Grillo, a 50-year-old who was convicted by a jury a year ago on a felony charge of obstruction of Congress and four misdemeanors, faced sentencing for his role in Jan. 6 this week. On Friday, he was remanded by a judge for the misdemeanors. (After the Supreme Court narrowed the application of the obstruction charge in June, Politico reports, prosecutors agreed to drop the obstruction charge against Grillo.)

Grillo, who had previously expressed remorse for participating in the Capitol rally, exhibited a different tone on Friday.

“This is a travesty. This is purely political,” one of Grillo’s supporters reportedly called out from the gallery.

Grillo replied: “Trump’s going to pardon me anyway.”

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