US senator Lindsey Graham has said officials who investigated Donald Trump supporters’ deadly attack on the US Capitol in 2021 should not be imprisoned – despite what his fellow Republican has argued in advance of his second presidency.
During an interview Sunday on NBC’s Meet the Press, show host Kristen Welker asked Graham whether he agreed with Trump’s assertion on the program seven days earlier that those involved in the investigation of the January 6 Capitol attack “should go to jail”.
“No,” said Graham, South Carolina’s senior senator as well as a ranking member of the chamber’s judiciary and budget committees.
Welker directed the question at Graham during a segment meant to elicit quick answers, which she acknowledged by replying: “OK – that was very clear and concise.”
The exchange offered an example of Graham’s occasional willingness to publicly disagree with Trump while still generally serving as a staunch ally – and it came amid a broader political dialogue about who should receive pardons in connection with an attack on Congress that was linked to multiple deaths, including the suicides of traumatized law enforcement officers.
Trump has promised to begin his second presidency in January 2025 by issuing pardons to those who carried out the attack, though there may be some exceptions. He spoke to Welker on 8 December about how supporters of his were pressured into accepting guilty pleas in connection with the violent, desperate attempt to keep him in the White House after losing the presidency to Joe Biden in 2020.
Having won the Oval Office back in November in his race against Vice-President Kamala Harris, Trump denied he would direct his second administration to arrest elected officials who investigated the Capitol attack, leading to federal criminal charges against him that have been dismissed. Nonetheless, he made it a point to tell Welker: “Honestly, they should go to jail.”
Bernie Sanders, the liberal US senator, made a separate appearance on Sunday on Meet the Press and said Biden in turn should “very seriously consider” issuing pre-emptive pardons to those who investigated the Capitol attack, as others have suggested. Sanders didn’t provide any names, but a week earlier Trump mentioned the names of Bennie Thompson and Liz Cheney, once the chairperson and vice-chairperson respectively of the US House committee convened for that investigation.
“You do not arrest elected officials … who undertake an investigation,” Sanders said, adding that doing so “is what authoritarianism [and] dictatorship is all about”.
Sanders also said: “You just heard Lindsey Graham make that statement – I think that idea of Trump is not going to very far.”
More than 1,250 people have pleaded guilty or otherwise been convicted in the January 6 attack. And at least 645 people have been sentenced to serve some time in prison, ranging from a few days to 22 years.
During his 8 December interview with Welker, Trump blamed those convictions on “a very corrupt system” that he would hold in check with pardons, despite criticizing Biden’s recent pardon of his son, Hunter, on convictions of lying on gun ownership application forms as well as tax evasion.
“I know the system,” said Trump, himself convicted in May in New York state court on charges of criminally falsifying business records to conceal hush-money payments to the adult film actor Stormy Daniels.
