Last week, shortly before he and President Donald Trump took office, now Vice President JD Vance appeared on "Fox News Sunday" where he spoke about pardoning January 6 defendants. Trump ultimately issued a pardon for such defendants on Monday, as he said he would. Vance has also long been in favor of pardons. That hasn't stopped the liberal mainstream media from trying to portray the Trump-Vance administration as already being in disarray, though.
"Trump's Mass Pardon For Jan. 6 Rioters Went Farther Than Republicans Had Wanted," read one headline from HuffPost.
"Even Vance had recently said such a broad pardon would 'obviously' not be appropriate," the piece mentioned, citing his comments from the Sunday show appearance.
However, sources told Breitbart News that Vance has been working on pardons for such defendants since he was part of the Trump-Vance transition team before taking office in his new role.
"Throughout the transition, JD was behind the scenes pushing as hard as possible for broad pardons and commutations of the J6 hostages," a source described as someone "familiar with Vance’s role in executing this strategy" told the outlet on Tuesday.
The article also contained a statement from Taylor Van Kirk, the vice president's press secretary.
"As Vice President Vance said on Fox News Sunday, pardoning the January 6 protestors would be handled on a case by case basis, which of course meant there was always going to be a large degree of gray area. Due to the corrupt process of these prosecutions, President Trump rightly decided to grant a broad pardon to all wrongfully convicted January 6 protestors," she told the outlet. "Despite the mainstream media’s obsession with January 6, the outgoing administration’s application of presidential pardons for members of the Biden family are far more deserving of additional media scrutiny."
Such pardons that outgoing President Joe Biden issued for his family members, minutes before Trump took office, have indeed received the ire from even fellow Democrats. Sen. Tim Kaine, for instance, of Virginia, complained about such pardons. He also decried Trump pardoning January 6 defendants.
Further, when it comes to Van Kirk's point about how "the mainstream media's obsession with January 6," which their Democratic allies also share, CNN's Harry Enten recently analyzed before Biden exited office that Americans simply don't care as much and blame Trump less for those events. Democrats made it a major focus for the 2024 election, an election cycle they lost quite handily.
Senate Majority Leader John Thune (R-SD), as Jeff highlighted earlier on Tuesday, also had a message for Democrats upset by Trump's pardons. "We said all along that Biden opened the door on this," he reminded.
Breitbart also mentioned that Trump made his plans for pardoning so many January 6 defendants quite clear in his interview with TIME, which granted him the title of "Person of the Year" for 2024.
Our own Kurt Schlichter has been eagerly advocating for a pardon for such defendants, especially with how Antifa agitators and those participating in the 2020 riots were in contrast given a free pass.
"The savage cruelty and maliciousness of the corrupt Department of Justice and FBI must be repudiated. President Donald Trump must pardon every single one of their victims. There is no other alternative," he wrote for a January 16 column. "There is no compromise. Anything less than a total repudiation of this pogrom validates the unspeakable evil perpetrated upon these patriotic citizens."