Lindsey Graham reacts after Trump floats pardon for Jan. 6 rioters [Video]

WHAT YOU NEED TO KNOW:

• Former President Donald Trump said he will give “pardons” to Jan. 6 rioters if he wins in 2024.
• Sen. Lindsey Graham said in an interview that it was “inappropriate” for Trump to float pardons for his supporters.
• Trump has yet to announce that he will run for reelection in 2024.

Sen. Lindsey Graham said that former President Donald Trump floating an idea to pardon January 6 rioters was “inappropriate.”

In an interview on CBS’s “Face the Nation” on Sunday, Graham was asked to respond after moderator Margaret Brennan played a segment from Trump’s Saturday event.

“If I run and I win, we will treat those people from January 6 fairly,” Trump told supporters during the “Save America” rally in Texas. “And if it requires pardons, we will give them pardons because they are being treated so unfairly.”

The South Carolina Republican expressed disagreement with Trump.

“I don’t want to send any signal that it was OK to defile the Capitol,” Graham said. “There are other groups with causes that may want to go down the violent path if these people get pardoned.”

He emphasized: “I think it’s inappropriate. I don’t want to reinforce that defiling the Capitol was OK. I don’t want to do anything that would make this more likely in the future.”

More than a year after the January 6 insurrection, 178 individuals have pled guilty to a range of crimes in connection to the riot and more than 750 people have been charged with crimes. 

The bipartisan House select committee investigating January 6 is currently probing the attack.

Trump has not yet announced if he will launch a 2024 White House bid but has held campaign-style rallies across the U.S.

Graham then brought up VP Kamala Harris’s support of the Minnesota Freedom Fund and the rioting that occurred in the state after the murder of George Floyd in Minneapolis in May 2020.

Harris, who was a senator at the time, asked her Twitter followers “to help post bail for those protesting on the ground in Minnesota.” The Minnesota Freedom Fund is a nonprofit organization that assists low-income individuals who need money for bail,

“When Kamala Harris and her associates and the people that work for her, her staffers, raised money to bail out the rioters who hit cops in the head and burned down stores, I didn’t like that either,” he said.

He added: “I don’t want to do anything from raising bail to pardoning people who take the law in their own hands because it will make more violence more likely. I want to deter people who did what — on January 6. And those who did it, I hope they go to jail and get the book thrown at them because they deserve it.”

Source: Business Insider