Vice President JD Vance defended the pardons of Jan. 6 rioters Sunday on “Face The Nation,” going against his comments earlier this month when he said violent rioters should not be pardoned.
Vance told “Face The Nation” moderator Margaret Brennan that violence against a police officer is “not justified,” but that the “weaponized” Department of Justice was “unconstitutional” in its charges against the rioters.
“There’s what the people actually did on Jan. 6, and we’re not saying that everybody did everything perfectly,” Vance said. “And then what did Merrick Garland’s Department of Justice do in unjustly prosecuting well over a thousand Americans in a way that was politically motivated?”
Vance said he and President Donald Trump looked at 1,600 cases and saw a “massive denial of due process of liberty,” and said he believes Trump made the “right decision” in blanket pardoning more than 1,500 people who were charged in the attack of the U.S. Capitol on Jan. 6, 2021, on his first day in office ― contradicting the comments he made earlier this month: “If you committed violence on that day, obviously you shouldn’t be pardoned.”
In August 2023, Trump was indicted for his role in the Jan. 6 insurrection, but the charges were dropped after Trump won the election in November because the Department of Justice does not allow the prosecution of a sitting president.
Vance also said there was a “double standard” against Jan. 6 rioters and Black Lives Matter protesters, who killed “more than two dozen people.” The Washington Post found that most of the deaths linked to protests in the summer of 2020 “were almost never actually part of the protest movement.”
Nine people died because of the Jan. 6 rioters, five of them within 36 hours of the riot, including a Capitol police officer who died from injuries he sustained that day. Four more police officers died by suicide in the days and months after the riot. About 140 police officers were injured from the riot, according to ABC News.
“We love our law enforcement and want people to be peaceful” with everyone but “especially with our good cops,” Vance said.
He said he and Trump “rectified a wrong,” referring to the Justice Department’s charges against rioters ― and said he stands by it.
Vance spoke about other issues during his “Face The Nation” interview, including grocery prices, which he said will come down, but “it will take a little bit of time.”
He also said Trump, who signed more than 20 executive orders on Inauguration Day, has accomplished more in five days than Joe Biden did in four years.