The public broadly supports pardons of defendants charged in the Jan. 6 Capitol riots on a case-by-case basis, essentially the plan put forward by President-elect Donald Trump.
While the country generally approves of Jan. 6 pardons by a slight margin, many more back a selective process, including 68% of Democrats.
In the latest Rasmussen Reports survey, 67% of voters back a case-by-case pardon that presumably would not include those charged with violence. Slightly more Republicans than Democrats back a blanket pardon.
Trump has been vague about just which of the estimated 1,500 Jan. 6 defendants he would pardon, but he has generally mentioned the hundreds who did not engage in violence and those ushered into the Capitol by police.
“Oh, absolutely, I would. If they’re innocent, I would pardon them,” Trump told a panel at the National Association of Black Journalists during the 2024 campaign. “They were convicted by a very tough system.”
I’ll never forget visiting the J6’ers in the DC gulag in 2021.
22-23 hours a day in solitary confinement under strict covid protocols being treated like political prisoners.
They deserve a full pardon, every single one.
Some of the most patriotic Americans I know are J6’ers. pic.twitter.com/zKShfpcDaB
— Marjorie Taylor Greene
(@mtgreenee) November 26, 2024
And he said at a May CNN town hall, “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.”
President Joe Biden’s pardon of his son Hunter Biden this week has prompted many Trump supporters to demand a blanket pardon of all the protesters from the Capitol riots in which Trump supporters stalled the Electoral College confirmation of President Joe Biden’s election in 2020.
“The Jan. 6 prosecutions were irredeemably corrupted by politics. President Trump should pardon or commute the sentences of each and every Jan. 6 defendant,” Judicial Watch President Tom Fitton told Secrets.
His group is suing the government in the wrongful death case of protester Ashli Babbitt, gunned down by a U.S. Capitol Police officer as she entered the Speaker’s Lobby in the Capitol.
Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene (R-GA), who has made it her mission to speak for protesters locked up in jails around the country, urged a full pardon, too.
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“I’ll never forget visiting the J6’ers in the DC gulag in 2021. 22-23 hours a day in solitary confinement under strict covid protocols being treated like political prisoners. They deserve a full pardon, every single one. Some of the most patriotic Americans I know are J6’ers,” she posted last week.
Rasmussen’s survey found that more people, by a 54%-40% margin, believe the riots were a “threat to democracy.” But they’ve cooled on the punishment.
