In a wide-ranging interview with NBC, Donald Trump stated that he believes all members of the January 6 committee should be imprisoned, though he did not explicitly threaten to use the Justice Department to do so.
“Honestly, they should go to jail,” he told Meet the Press moderator Kristen Welker during an interview about his “day one” plans, which aired Sunday.
In response to a question about Liz Cheney, a Republican lawmaker who served as the committee’s vice chair and ran alongside Kamala Harris in the 2024 election, Trump declared that “everyone” on the panel should go to jail “for what they did.”
Despite this, Trump insisted that his FBI director nominee, Kash Patel, and attorney general nominee, Pam Bondi, not pursue the committee members or any of his other political enemies.
“I want her to do whatever she wants to do. “I’m not going to tell her to do it,” he said about Bondi.
“I’m not looking to go back into the past,” he said when asked if he would prosecute Biden family members, including President Joe Biden.
“I want to make our country successful. Retribution will come through success.”
Throughout his 2024 campaign, the president-elect made headlines by threatening to imprison his political opponents, just as he did in 2016.
Most recently, in September, he threatened to prosecute “those people who CHEATED,” a reference to top Democratic leaders like Biden and former House Speaker Nancy Pelosi, in a post on Truth Social.
And, while he did not carry out his explicit threat to imprison Hillary Clinton following his 2016 election victory, his new emphasis on installing loyalists at top agencies such as the FBI and Justice Department has prompted many to question whether the threats are genuine this time.
Despite losing his 2020 reelection bid to Joe Biden, Trump insisted (and still does) that he was the rightful winner.
On January 6, 2021, his baseless allegations of widespread fraud incited a mob attack on the US Capitol, as throngs of his supporters attempted to prevent Congress from certifying the transfer of power.
Following his 2024 election victory, the Justice Department conducted a now-defunct investigation into Trump’s actions, while Congress, in the form of a bipartisan committee, also launched an investigation on January 6.
Members of the committee compiled countless hours of video evidence and testimony that painted a horrifying picture of the violence that occurred during the attack, as well as the level of knowledge Trump and his team possessed to predict it.
In an interview broadcast Sunday, Trump also stated that he would pardon some of the rioters on his “first day” in office.
“I’m going to act quickly.” “First day,” Trump said, later adding about their imprisonment that “they’ve been in there for years, and they’re in a filthy, disgusting place that shouldn’t even be open.”
Patel, the president-elect’s nominee for the FBI, has called on the government to pursue journalists through criminal and civil legal means. Patel has also called for the FBI to be dismantled following its investigation into the 2016 Trump campaign’s alleged ties to Russian operatives.
This week, Biden took steps to protect his family from some of that danger, issuing a blanket pardon for his son Hunter for any crimes committed over the previous 11 years.
The incumbent president’s adult son has a history of drug abuse and was scheduled for sentencing on tax and gun charges when he was pardoned.
Trump and his allies attacked the pardon as a symbol of Washington corruption, while the president’s allies did the opposite: many Democrats chastised the president for creating the appearance of a different standard of justice for his family members, despite the fact that the facts of his son’s criminal case are undisputed.
Some supporters of the president, however, argue that the move was necessary to protect the president’s family from political retribution from the incoming administration.