Donald Trump has said one of his first acts if given a second presidency would be to pardon the insurrectionists who carried out the January 6 attack on the US Capitol, referring to them as “hostages” in a Truth Social post on Monday night.
“My first acts as your next President will be to Close the Border, DRILL, BABY, DRILL, and Free January 6 Hostages being wrongfully imprisoned!” Trump wrote.
Though he has long said he will dismiss charges against the rioters if elected, the post is the closest Trump has come to saying that pardons for the Capitol attack rioters is a first-day priority, along with oil and gas drilling as well as a crackdown at the US-Mexico border. Trump’s post came after he has implied that he plans to be a “dictator” on his first day back in office if returned to the White House after losing to Joe Biden in 2020.
“We’re closing the border and we’re drilling, drilling, drilling,” Trump told Fox News’ Sean Hannity at a town hall event in December when asked if he would be a dictator. “After that, I’m not a dictator.”
Trump has emphasized his “drilling” plans on the campaign trail as a way to highlight the inflation that has been seen during Biden’s presidency. Trump has promised to start “drilling” for oil to help temper inflation, though gas prices plunged down to $3 a gallon in 2023, down from a peak of $5 in 2022. US oil production has also hit a record high under Biden.
The Truth Social post is not the first time Trump has referred to those prosecuted for participating in the riots meant to disrupt the congressional certification of Biden’s electoral victory as “hostages”. The former president has been using the term for months in attempts to downplay the attack that left 140 police officers injured and has been linked to nine deaths.
In January, a Republican-appointed federal judge – during sentencing proceedings for a January 6 attacker – said that “in my thirty-seven years on the bench, I cannot recall a time when such meritless justifications of criminal activity have gone mainstream”.
“I have been dismayed to see distortions and outright falsehoods seep into public consciousness,” Judge Royce Lamberth wrote.
Since the Capitol attack, 1,358 people from nearly all 50 states have been charged for participating in the riot, and many have been convicted, according to the justice department. Nearly 500 have been charged with the felony of assaulting or impeding law enforcement, with many convicted as well.
Trump himself was supposed to face trial for his attempts to overturn the 2020 election. But the supreme court in April is planning to hear arguments over whether the former president is immune from prosecution.
The January 6 insurrection was likely on Trump’s mind on Monday night after the Republican-led House committee investigating the attack released a report that said four former White House employees contradicted a part of ex-aide Cassidy Hutchinson’s testimony about Trump’s behavior before the attack.
A dramatic part of Hutchinson’s testimony, which she gave in public in 2022, included her reports that an irritable Trump lunged at the steering wheel of his car after Secret Service agents refused to take him to the Capitol after he gave a speech to supporters before the attack. Hutchinson said that another former White House staffer had told her that Trump tried to grab the wheel.
But the committee’s new report said: “None of the White House employees corroborated Hutchinson’s sensational story about President Trump’s lunging for the steering wheel.”
Instead, an unnamed Secret Service agent told the committee that while Trump was insistent on going to the Capitol, and had clear irritation in his voice when talking to his agents, Trump never grabbed for the wheel.
Hutchinson, through her lawyer, has said that she will not “succumb to a pressure campaign from those who seek to silence her”.
