NEW YORK, Dec 09 (Reuters): President-elect Donald Trump said in an interview that aired on Sunday that he would act on his first day in office to pardon rioters involved in the Jan 6, 2021 Capitol attack, further building expectations for a broad granting of clemency.
"I'm going to be acting very quickly, first day," Trump said on NBC News' "Meet the Press with Kristen Welker" 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 that 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.
In what has been billed as America's largest-ever criminal investigation, at least 1,572 defendants have been charged in the Jan. 6 attack, with crimes ranging from unlawfully entering restricted grounds to seditious conspiracy and violent assault.
Of that total, more than 1,251 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.
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 in the Nov. 5 election - will likely add to already high expectations for broad action once Trump is sworn in to office on Jan. 20.
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