Senate Republicans were mostly evasive when asked about President Donald Trump’s pardon of both violent and non-violent offenders who stormed the US Capitol on January 6 four years ago.
On the first day of his second term in office, Trump, who had repeatedly said that he would pardon people who committed crimes on January 6, and who called them hostages while onstage with hostages recently freed by Hamas as part of a ceasefire between Israel and Gaza, issued pardons for 1,500 people criminally charged with the violent assault on the US Capitol in attempt to stop the certification of the 2020 presidential election results.
“Look, nobody is a stronger supporter of law enforcement than President Trump myself, or JD Vance,” Sen. Bernie Moreno of Ohio told The Independent. “But these people have been treated horribly. Nobody's been treated worse than these people, and they deserve to have their day in court and be treated like proper American citizens.”
But Republican Senators remained largely tight-lipped about the pardons.
“No comment,” Tim Sheehy, a newly-elected senator from Montana, told The Independent. Sen. John Curtis, who replaced frequent Trump critic Mitt Romney as Utah’s senator, did not comment and suggested getting in contact with his office while Sen. Lindsey Graham told The Independent, “I’ll talk about that later,” in the week.
Sen. John Cornyn of Texas, a member of the Senate Judiciary Committee, told The Independent that it was not his place to comment on Trump’s pardons.
“It’s the president’s prerogative,” he said. “Congress doesn’t have a role.”
Many of the people pardoned were accused of assaulting police officers and putting senators of the president’s party at risk four years ago. However, most of those elected officials did not want to focus on the action and instead remained vague.
“My understanding, there was a range of actions that he took and I guess I want to look and see what those are,” Sen. John Hoeven of North Dakota told The Independent.
Sen. James Lankford of Oklahoma said he would not comment because “we've got about 200 executive orders. That seems to be the only one anyone's talking about.”
Other Republicans focused on Joe Biden and his actions. Sen. Shelley Moore Capito diverted to talking about how Biden issued preemptive pardons for members of his family who have been the focus of Republican investigations and for various targets of Trump’s wrath such as former chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff Mark Milley, Anthony Fauci and members of the January 6 select committee,
“It’s his authority and he’s using it,” she told The Independent. “I mean, President Biden widened the pardon authority, this president is using pardon authority.”
Moreno did the same, saying that Trump was more coherent than Biden.
“Well, I think President Trump outlined that pretty well yesterday in his press conference,” he told The Independent. “I don't remember Joe Biden ever doing a press conference like that.”
Moreno beat former Democratic incumbent Sherrod Brown in November as Trump carried Ohio. He also compared the incarceration of January 6 inmates to people who were arrested for Black Lives Matter demonstrations that turned violent during the summer of 2020.
“Some of these people have been in jail for a long time,” he told The Independent. “January 6 was a long time ago, and they've been in jail with their due process rights taken away.”
Sen. Tommy Tuberville of Alabama, one of Trump’s most vocal supporters, said he wholly supported the pardons, saying he believed “a hundred percent” that some of the people in the crowd on January 6 were undercover FBI agents. A report from the Inspector General for the Justice Department debunked that false claim in December.
“I feel sorry for the officers, a lot of these people were set up,” Tuberville told The Independent. “People posing that they were MAGA people but they were FBI agents. They're the ones who need to go to jail. Okay, those people that were put over here, and instigated the whole whole process.”
Some Republicans disagreed though, specifically citing the attacks on law enforcement.
“We have an honest disagreement on anybody who was convicted of a violent crime against particularly police officers, Sen. Thom Tillis of North Carolina, who is up for re-election next year, told The Independent. “We're introducing bills this week to increase penalties and create federal crimes for injuring police officers so that should tell you all you need to know about me.”
Sen. Susan Collins of Maine, who voted to convict Trump for his actions during the January 6 riot, tried to distinguish between people convicted for violent and nonviolent offenses.
“I think undoubtedly that there were some people in the capitol that day that were caught up in the crowd and did not commit any kind of violent act,” she told The Independent. “ I would draw a huge contrast between those individuals and people who assaulted police officers with sticks or their fists or pepper spray, and those individuals who broke windows and destroyed property, they have committed violent crimes and to me, should not be pardoned.”
Collins, the chairwoman of the powerful Senate Appropriations Committee, faces re-election in Maine next year, as does Sen. Bill Cassidy of Louisiana, who also voted to convict Trump.
“I'm a big back the blue guy,” Cassidy told reporters and insisted “it’s not right” to pardon anyone who assaulted a police officer.
Cassidy faces a right-wing Republican primary challenger, which might make his stance difficult in 2026.
