CBS News host Margaret Brennan pressed Vice President J.D. Vance on Sunday after President Donald Trump issued blanket pardons for 1,500 individuals involved in the January 6 Capitol riots, breaking his earlier promise to evaluate cases individually.
During the interview on Face the Nation, Brennan reminded Vance of his previous statement on Fox News, where he assured that violent offenders would not receive pardons. “Did you counsel the president against these blanket pardons for 1,500 people, including those who committed violence?” Brennan asked.
“Margaret, I noticed that you cut off the thing that I said immediately after that,” Vance countered. “The full quote is that, of course, there are gray areas.” Vance defended the decision, arguing that the Department of Justice under former Attorney General Merrick Garland had been politically weaponized.
“What the president said consistently on the campaign is that he was going to look at a case-by-case basis, and that’s exactly what we did,” Vance claimed. Brennan pushed back, noting the contradiction. “Case-by-case basis,” she said. “This is a blanket.”
Vance insisted that each of the 1,600 cases had been reviewed and claimed that many defendants were denied their constitutional rights. “We looked at 1,600 cases. And the thing that came out of it, Margaret, is that there was a massive denial of due process of liberty, and a lot of people were denied their constitutional rights.
The president believes that. I believe that, and I think he made the right decision,” he asserted. Brennan highlighted that some of the pardoned individuals had attacked law enforcement officers. “If you stand with law enforcement, how can you call these people unjustly imprisoned?” she asked.
Vance attempted to distinguish between the actions of the rioters and what he called politically motivated prosecutions. “There’s what the people actually did on January the 6th, and we’re not saying that everybody did everything perfectly,” Vance said.
“And then what did Merrick Garland’s Department of Justice do in unjustly prosecuting well over a thousand Americans in a way that was politically motivated.” Brennan pressed further, asking, “Is violence like that against a police officer ever justified?”
“Violence against a police officer is not justified,” Vance acknowledged. “But that doesn’t mean that you should have Merrick Garland’s weaponized Department of Justice expose you to an incredibly unfair process.”
The exchange underscored the controversy surrounding Trump’s pardons, with critics arguing they undermine accountability for the violent actions of January 6 participants, while supporters claim the justice system unfairly targeted them for political reasons.