Republicans Struggle to Defend Trump Freeing Rioters Who Assaulted Cops
It’s easy to forget that many Republicans who now martyr the rioters who wreaked havoc on the Capitol on Jan. 6 once condemned the violence committed in Donald Trump’s name.
On Monday, the freshly sworn-in president granted blanket pardons to 1,500 individuals convicted of offenses related to the failed effort to keep Trump in power and commutations to over a dozen other offenders, including violent offenders. Now, Republican senators who previously condemned the attack and the violence of Jan. 6 are struggling to justify Trump’s literal “get out of jail free card” — or are outright pretending not to know what’s going on.
Senate Majority Leader John Thune (R-S.D.) said Tuesday morning that Republicans are “looking backwards, we’re looking forward,” and that he hadn’t “seen all the stuff, the [executive orders],” that Trump signed on Monday. Thune asserted that there were no blanket pardons handed out. “I think they were case-by-case,” he told reporters.
The order signed by Trump grants “a full, complete and unconditional pardon to all other individuals convicted of offenses related to events that occurred at or near the United States Capitol on January 6, 2021.”
Sen. Tommy Tuberville initially told CNN that he was “100 percent” on board with “everyone” convicted of offenses related to Jan. 6 receiving a pardon. When pressed on if that included those who committed violence, Tuberville said “no, that’s not acceptable. But I didn’t see it.”
“I don’t know whether I don’t believe [officers were assaulted,] because I didn’t see it,” he added when questioned by reporters. “Now, if I see it, I would believe it, but I didn’t see that video.”
Sen. Susan Collins (R-Maine) claimed that she didn’t “know whether there were pardons given to individuals who assaulted police officers or whether there were pardons given to people who damaged property, who rummaged through desks, who broke windows in the Capitol,” but that she “disagree[s] with those pardons if they were given.”
Collins and Thune both attempted to deflect outrage over the pardoning of individuals who assaulted law enforcement and planned violence against lawmakers to preemptive pardons former President Joe Biden granted to prominent members of his administration and family who have not been convicted of crimes, but have been floated as potential targets by Trump and his allies.
It’s a “a terrible day for our Justice Department for two reasons,” Collins said. Thune asserted to CNN that Biden “opened the door” by engaging in the “most massive use of the pardon power that we’ve seen in history.”
Sen. Tim Kaine (D-Va.) told CNN that Biden’s use of the pardon power to safeguard his family made it harder to “make a critique, to stand on the high ground and make a critique of the Trump pardons on January 6.”
Several other GOP senators used Biden as a convenient crutch to mollify their criticism of Trump. Sen. Thom Tillis (R-N.C.) said that while he has “concerns with any pardons for people who did any harm to police officers,” Biden’s use of the power to preemptively pardon members of his administration and family “may mean we need to look at what that authority really entails.”
“Anybody who is convicted of assault on a police officer, I can’t get there, at all. I think it was a bad idea,” Tillis later told Spectrum News.
For all the racket raised by Republicans accusing the Biden administration of allowing violent criminals to run rampant in American cities, and their posturing as a party of support for law enforcement, there is little outrage over the president’s decision to release hundreds of Jan. 6 rioters, many who beat police officers and threatened to harm lawmakers.
Trump’s Secretary of State Marco Rubio, formerly a Republican senator from Florida, was asked by Gayle King how he reconciled past criticism of the rioters and the destruction of the Capitol with Monday’s pardons. Rubio deflected the question: “I used to be a United States senator […] and now I’m about to be sworn in as the secretary of state of the United States. And that’s what I’m thinking. I work for Donald J. Trump.”
Senators on the hill seem to be adopting the same line of thinking.
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