"I'm going to be acting very quickly, first day," Trump said on NBC News' Meet the Press with Kristen Welker on Sunday when asked when he planned to pardon his supporters who were charged in the attack aimed at overturning his 2020 election defeat.
Trump told Welker there could be "some exceptions" to his pardons if the individuals had acted "radical" or "crazy" during the assault, which left more than 140 police officers injured and led to several deaths.
Several people died and dozens were injured in the attack on the Capitol. (AP PHOTO)
But Trump described the prosecutions of his supporters as inherently corrupt and did not rule out pardoning the more than 900 defendants who had already pleaded guilty, including those accused of acting violently in the attack.
"I'm going to look at everything. We're going to look at individual cases," Trump said.
The comments - Trump's most detailed on the issue of pardons since he defeated Vice President Kamala Harris - will likely add to already high expectations for broad action once Trump is sworn in to office on January 20.
Donald Trump didn't rule out pardoning the more than 900 defendants who had already pleaded guilty. (AP PHOTO)
"He continues to put out the public message closer and closer to what the J6 community is asking for, which is clemency for all of the January 6ers," Suzzanne Monk, a longtime advocate for defendants charged in the riot, told Reuters.
Hopes among January 6 defendants and their supporters for broad-based clemency have been growing over the past week after President Joe Biden pardoned his son Hunter, marking a reversal from his pledge not to interfere with his son's criminal cases.
Biden said Hunter deserved a pardon because he was the victim of political persecution, an argument Trump will likely use to justify mass pardons. Some Biden critics said his decision would lessen the political cost for Trump.
In what has been billed as America's largest-ever criminal investigation, at least 1572 defendants have been charged in the January 6 attack, with crimes ranging from unlawfully entering restricted grounds to seditious conspiracy and violent assault.
More than 1251 have been convicted or pleaded guilty and 645 have been sentenced to prison, with punishments ranging from a few days to 22 years, according to the latest data from the Justice Department.
