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Trump Again Hints at Jan. 6 Pardons, Including for Attacks on Police

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Trump Again Hints at Jan. 6 Pardons, Including for Attacks on Police

President-elect Donald J. Trump on Tuesday once again left open the possibility of offering pardons to some of his supporters who are serving prison time for assaulting police officers during the attack on the Capitol on Jan. 6, 2021.

Mr. Trump, who campaigned on a pledge to restore “law and order,” said that the pardons he intended to offer could cover people charged and convicted of violent crimes.

“Well, we’re looking at it,” Mr. Trump told reporters at a news conference at Mar-a-Lago, his Florida estate, when asked whether he was considering pardoning people charged with violent offenses. “We’ll be looking at the whole thing, but I’ll be making major pardons, yes.”

When a reporter pressed Mr. Trump on whether he would pardon anyone who attacked a police officer, Mr. Trump deflected and suggested that his supporters were the true victims of Jan. 6.

“Well, you know, the only one that was killed was a beautiful young lady named Ashli Babbitt,” he said, adding that she was “shot for no reason whatsoever.” In fact, three other pro-Trump protesters also died during the riot.

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Ms. Babbitt, an Air Force veteran, was shot and killed by a police officer while she was part of a group trying to break through a door to the House floor, where lawmakers were seeking shelter from the mob. Her death has become a cause célèbre on the right.

Mr. Trump did not mention the more than 140 police officers who were injured during the attack by people wielding baseball bats, flagpoles, metal batons, broken table legs, crutches and even a hockey stick. He also said nothing about four officers who later died by suicide or another who died shortly after Jan. 6 of a stroke that a medical examiner determined was caused in part by “all that transpired” on that day.

At Tuesday’s news conference, Mr. Trump sought to blame the F.B.I. for the riot, echoing a conspiracy theory that is widespread on the right and that was contradicted by a recent report from the Justice Department’s internal watchdog.

Moreover, he seemed to suggest, without evidence, that the Iranian-backed terrorist organization Hezbollah was somehow involved in the attack — an allegation that has never come up in the multiple criminal and congressional investigations into Jan. 6.

Representatives for Mr. Trump did not respond to questions about these comments.

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Even though he repeatedly promised during his campaign and after the election to issue pardons to potentially hundreds of Jan. 6 rioters, Mr. Trump has never described specific criteria for who will get clemency.

Sometimes, he has said that he will pardon rioters charged only with nonviolent crimes — of which there are about 1,000. At other times, including during an interview with the National Association of Black Journalists, Mr. Trump left open the possibility that he would pardon people who attacked the police.

When Mr. Trump won the election, there was jubilation among the Jan. 6 defendants and their families who have been urging him to issue a blanket amnesty to all of the nearly 1,600 who have been charged over the past four years in connection with the Capitol attack.

But if Mr. Trump decides to do that, it will mean granting some form of clemency to people, say, who hit officers with two-by-fours or members of far-right groups like the Proud Boys who were convicted and imprisoned on charges of seditious conspiracy.

After initially condemning the riot as “a heinous attack” and vowing that those who broke the law that day “will pay,” Mr. Trump and his allies quickly pivoted into a campaign to rebrand and launder Jan. 6 as a day of patriotism by Trump supporters. Mr. Trump continued that rewriting of history at Tuesday’s news conference.

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He portrayed the imprisoned supporters as nonviolent victims of unfair prosecutors. He falsely claimed that his supporters brought “not one gun” to the Capitol. And he implied, without evidence, that the riot was instead a plot by either the F.B.I. or shadowy foreign actors.

“They had people in some form related to the F.B.I.,” Mr. Trump said of the riot, referring to the false-flag conspiracy theory prevalent on the right.

The baseless claim that Jan. 6 was instigated by “deep state” actors rather than the hundreds of Trump supporters who were trying to block the peaceful transfer of power in his name has been rejected by defense lawyers working on Capitol riot cases, the Justice Department’s inspector general and even some of the F.B.I.’s own informants who were at the Capitol that day.

“We have to find out about Hezbollah,” Mr. Trump said. “We have to find out about who exactly was in that whole thing, because people that did some bad things were not prosecuted.”

It is unclear why Mr. Trump mentioned Hezbollah in connection with Jan. 6.

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Video: Behind the Supreme Court’s Push to Expand Presidential Power

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Video: Behind the Supreme Court’s Push to Expand Presidential Power

new video loaded: Behind the Supreme Court’s Push to Expand Presidential Power

For more than a decade, the Supreme Court’s conservative majority has chipped away at Congress’s power to insulate independent agencies from politics. Now, the court has signaled its willingness to expand presidential power once again.

By Ann E. Marimow, Claire Hogan, Stephanie Swart and Pierre Kattar

December 12, 2025

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Europe’s rocky relations with Donald Trump

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Europe’s rocky relations with Donald Trump

Gideon talks to Jens Stoltenberg, Nato’s former secretary-general, about Ukraine and Europe’s strategic priorities after recent scathing criticism from US president Donald Trump over its failure to end the war: ‘They talk but they don’t produce.’ Clip: Politico

Free links to read more on this topic:

The White House’s rupture with the western alliance

Trump pushes for ‘free economic zone’ in Donbas, says Zelenskyy

Friedrich Merz offers to host Ukraine talks so deal not done ‘above Europe’s head’

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Ukraine’s ‘fortress belt’ that Donald Trump wants to trade for peace

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Trump announces pardon for Tina Peters, increasing pressure to free her though he can’t erase state charges | CNN Politics

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Trump announces pardon for Tina Peters, increasing pressure to free her though he can’t erase state charges | CNN Politics

President Donald Trump announced Thursday he is granting Tina Peters a full federal pardon, which is likely to increase the pressure campaign to free the former Colorado clerk from state prison even though he cannot erase her state charges.

“Tina is sitting in a Colorado prison for the ‘crime’ of demanding Honest Elections. Today I am granting Tina a full Pardon for her attempts to expose Voter Fraud in the Rigged 2020 Presidential Election,” the president wrote on Truth Social.

Peters, the former Republican clerk of Mesa, Colorado, was found guilty last year on state charges of participating in a scheme to breach voting systems that hoped to prove Trump’s false claims of mass voter fraud in 2020. She was sentenced to nine years in prison and is serving her sentence at a women’s prison in Pueblo, Colorado.

Peters is currently the only Trump ally in prison for crimes related to the attempts to overturn the 2020 presidential election. She still believes that election was stolen, her lawyers recently told CNN. Her lawyers have also raised concerns about her physical safety and told a judge that her health is declining behind bars.

Trump’s pardon has no legal impact on her state conviction and incarceration. But the administration has been pressuring Colorado officials to set her free or at least transfer her into federal custody, where she could be moved into a more comfortable facility. The Justice Department even stepped in to support Peters’ unsuccessful attempt to convince a federal judge to release her from prison.

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After months of hearings and legal filings, a federal judge in Denver rejected her federal lawsuit seeking release on Monday, concluding that state courts are the proper venue for her to challenger her conviction.

Democratic Colorado Gov. Jared Polis in a statement defended Peters’ conviction. “No President has jurisdiction over state law nor the power to pardon a person for state convictions. This is a matter for the courts to decide, and we will abide by court orders,” he said.

Polis has previously said he won’t pardon Peters as part of any quid-pro-quo deal.

Colorado Attorney General Phil Weiser, a Democrat who is fighting to uphold Peters’ conviction and keep her behind bars, also dismissed the pardon in a statement.

“The idea that a president could pardon someone tried and convicted in state court has no precedent in American law, would be an outrageous departure from what our constitution requires, and will not hold up,” Weiser said.

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One of her lawyers sent a letter to Trump earlier this month, making the case for a pardon. Those efforts were successful at securing a symbolic clemency action from Trump, however, only Polis has the power to pardon Peters for her state crimes and set her free.

CNN’s Kaitlan Collins contributed to this report.

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