Former Vice President Mike Pence said on Tuesday his former boss, the president-elect, should not pardon January 6 rioters and prays that Donald Trump will uphold his commitment to the Constitution.
Pence found himself targeted by a violent mob of MAGA loyalists and Trump supporters on January 6, 2021, as some rioters who stormed the U.S. Capitol expressed intentions to harm or even kill the former vice president.
Trump supporters were enraged by Pence’s refusal to block the certification of the Electoral College results, and some in the crowd chanted “Hang Mike Pence” as they moved through the Capitol building.
Speaking to an audience at the 2024 Dispatch Summit in Washington, D.C., Pence reiterated that he does not believe the January 6 rioters deserve leniency, despite Trump and his allies portraying them as patriots who were unfairly prosecuted.
“I don’t think the president should pardon anyone who assaulted a police officer at the United States Capitol on January 6,” Pence said on stage, according to The Dispatch.
Newsweek contacted the Trump-Vance transition team for comment by email on Thursday early morning, outside of standard working hours.
Pence said that he and his wife are “literally praying that President-elect Trump and Vice President-elect Vance will stand on the commitments that they will make when they raise their right hands on that day.”
Trump has repeatedly promised to grant presidential pardons to all 1,500 rioters charged with crimes in connection to the January 6 capital attack.
“I am inclined to pardon many of them. I can’t say for every single one because a couple of them, probably, they got out of control,” Trump said in May 2023 at a CNN Town Hall.
He added: “I would say it will be a large portion of them, and it would be early on.”
Trump’s electoral victory on November 5 has sparked renewed hope among imprisoned January 6 rioters and their supporters, many of whom believe the former president will pardon them once he returns to office in 2025.
“After four long years, I’m finally coming home. It’s so surreal,” Edward Jacob “Jake” Lang, who stormed the Capitol on January 6, 2021, and was arrested in the same month, previously told Newsweek on Wednesday, the same day Trump was elected president for a second time.
“Hollywood couldn’t have written a better story.”
Lang, who was 25 at the time of the Capitol riots, is accused of wielding a dangerous weapon against Capitol Police officers and obstructing an official proceeding.
Footage from the riot shows him swatting a bat at Capitol Police officers “multiple times,” according to an FBI affidavit from January 15, 2021. Lang, who describes himself as a political prisoner, is still awaiting trial.
Meanwhile, the U.S. Supreme Court declined to hear the appeal of a January 6 rioter who argued that a law barring demonstrations at the U.S. Capitol violates the First Amendment.
John Nassif, who was sentenced to seven months in prison in August 2022 for his role in the Capitol riot, contended that the Capitol belonged to the American people and that he had a right to express himself there.
Nassif’s attorneys argued that he entered the Capitol about an hour after the building was first breached and stayed for only 10 minutes, briefly entering the Rotunda but going no further.
They claimed the protest on January 6, 2021, was peaceful and occurred in a publicly accessible location, which they believed was protected by the First Amendment.
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