Trump promises 'major pardons' for J6 defendants

On Tuesday during a press conference, President-elect Donald Trump said that he will be making some "major pardons" for defendants convicted over actions on January 6, 2021, at the Capitol riot.

"You said on your first day of office you were going to pardon Jan. 6 defendants. Are you planning to pardon those who were charged with violent offenses?” a reporter asked the incoming president.

“Well, we’re looking at it, and we have other people in there,” Trump said. He then added that there were people who did "some bad things weren’t prosecuted, and people that didn’t even walk into the building are in jail right now. So, we’ll be looking at the whole thing. But I’ll be making major pardons, yes."

Trump has previously said that he would be pardoning those hit with different charges and sentences stemming from J6 on a "case-by-case" basis during a Time Magazine interview late last year. "I'm going to do case-by-case, and if they were non-violent, I think they've been greatly punished," Trump said at the time.

The comments from Trump just one day after the four-year anniversary of the riot at the Capitol building after the president-elect gave a speech at the Ellipse and many of his supporters protested against his losing the election to Joe Biden.

“The only one that was killed was a beautiful young lady named Ashli Babbitt,” Trump added in his comments to reporters. He said that Babbitt "should have never been shot" that day. “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," Trump added.