President Donald Trump shocked Washington when he signed mass pardons for nonviolent and violent Jan. 6 rioters alike, going drastically further than his transition officials conveyed he would for the long-telegraphed clemency.
But not everyone was so surprised. Trump’s longtime supporters and members of the online right made clear to Trump officials that going short of complete mass pardons wouldn’t be accepted and sought to push the president, according to three sources familiar with the conversations.
“Anything less than a full pardon would have been widely panned by the base,” said one Republican official familiar with the pressure campaign. Trump had “lots of pressure from the base on this, particularly influential figures on the online right that pushed him in that direction.”
Throughout the campaign and transition, Trump had a clear message: As president, he would consider each Jan. 6 case for pardons or commutation on a case-by-case basis. But he would not commit to making a distinction between violent and nonviolent offenders.
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One person told NOTUS that Trump had always been in favor of widespread pardons. But in an interview with Time magazine in December, Trump said that he would review each Jan. 6 defendant on a “case-by-case” basis, adding that “if they were nonviolent, I think they’ve been greatly punished.”
One month later, his vice president-elect, JD Vance, echoed this sentiment and made a firmer commitment: Those who committed violence shouldn’t be pardoned.
“If you protested peacefully on Jan. 6 and you’ve had Merrick Garland’s Department of Justice treat you like a gang member, you should be pardoned,” Vance told Fox News Sunday earlier this month. “If you committed violence on that day, obviously you shouldn’t be pardoned.”
These comments outraged the MAGA base.
“Video gets released of cops shooting innocent J6 protesters and @JDVance goes on Fox News and tells the world that only non violent protesters should get pardoned. Better rethink what you just said JD,” Hodgetwins, a pro-Trump account, posted on X.
Vance quickly defended himself, saying that he “donated to the J6 political prisoner fund and got ROASTED for it during my senate race. I’ve been defending these guys for years,” he said in a response on X.
But one source with knowledge of the situation told NOTUS that at the time, Vance was simply stating the stance of Trump and the transition team: The pardons would be decided on a case-by-case basis and violent offenders would likely not get a pardon.
But behind the scenes, there was a split within the transition team and Trumpworld. Some, including Vance, advocated for Trump to issue broad and sweeping pardons and commutations to those convicted of crimes on Jan. 6, while others — including incoming Chief of Staff Susie Wiles — were more wary of doing so, two sources told NOTUS.
However, after seeing the immense backlash from the base following Vance saying on TV that violent offenders wouldn’t receive a pardon — and the backlash to his Time interview — Trump made the final decision that nearly everyone would be getting a pardon, one of the sources told NOTUS.
The White House rejected the assertion that Trump changed his mind at the last minute or that he and Vance were ever out of lockstep on the pardons.
“The president ultimately decided that all of these cases have been an effort by the Biden Department of Justice to weaponize our system against American citizens, and he made the decision to pardon and commute their sentences,” Trump’s press secretary, Karoline Leavitt, told NOTUS.
And Vance’s spokesperson, Taylor Van Kirk, added that when it came to handling the pardons on a case-by-case basis, “there was always going to be a large degree of gray area. Due to the corrupt process of these prosecutions, President Trump rightly decided to grant a broad pardon to all wrongfully convicted January 6 protestors.”
While not everyone was fully on board with this decision, this all changed when President Joe Biden decided to issue pardons to Jan. 6 committee members and staff, his family and a man convicted of killing two FBI agents, two sources told NOTUS.
“Biden made a mockery of the U.S. Justice system,” one senior source close to Trump told NOTUS. “He used it to attempt to imprison his chief political opponent, then he started pardoning his family, members of Congress … then he pardoned hardcore cop killers who admitted to killing police — and the [mainstream media] wants to bitch about a few idiots that threw water bottles? Fuck you.”
The argument that this is all Biden’s fault, that he deserves the blame for expanding pardoning powers, has unified Republicans, at least on the surface.
A source familiar told NOTUS that it “didn’t hurt that Biden pardoned his entire family before the clock ran out. Gave him the political cover he needed to execute it.”
And Mike Davis, a pro-Trump lawyer and online defender, put it more succinctly: “Democrats have lost their high moral ground on this issue, and maybe that’s what changed.”
But few who know the president believe he needed a reason to go through with the mass pardons. One former official recalled how often in the first term, Trump went against his own advisers to change once-agreed-upon policy
“I think he wanted to do this all along,” the former official said. “I think this was a decision by the president, after thinking about it, he got the advice from everybody, and he made the decision he wanted to make.”
Trump on Tuesday defended his decision to include those who violently attacked police officers, despite agreeing when asked by reporters that it’s “never acceptable” to assault an officer.
“I am the friend of the police,” he said. “Murders today are not even charged. You have murders that aren’t charged all over. … These people have already served years in prison, and they’ve served them viciously, it’s a disgusting prison. It’s horrible, it’s inhumane. “
Trump added, “If you look at the American public, the American public is tired of it.”
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Jasmine Wright and Reese Gorman are reporters at NOTUS.
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