A reporter asked Trump at Mar-a-Lago, “You said on your first day of office you were going to pardon Jan. 6 defendants. Are you planning to pardon those who were charged with violent offenses?”

TRUMP SAYS HE WILL CHANGE THE NAME OF GULF OF MEXICO TO ‘GULF OF AMERICA’

“Well, we’re looking at it, and we have other people in there,” Trump said, later adding there were people who were “doing some bad things weren’t prosecuted, and people that didn’t even walk into the building are in jail right now. So, we’ll be looking at the whole thing. But I’ll be making major pardons, yes.”

Trump’s comments come just one day after the four-year anniversary of the riot, when a violent mob entered the Capitol after Trump gave a speech at the Ellipse in protest of his 2020 election loss to President Joe Biden.

Trump just announced that he’ll be making “major pardons” for the January 6th political prisoners! pic.twitter.com/8GPZqQl4GL

— Ryann McEnany (@RyannMcEnany) January 7, 2025

He stood firm in his defense of the late Ashli Babbitt, a rioter fatally shot by Capitol Police during the breach. “The only one that was killed was a beautiful young lady named Ashli Babbitt,” Trump told reporters, adding she “should have never been shot.”

“In fact, they say that she was trying to hold back the crowd, and the crowd was made up of a lot of different people, so we’ll see,” Trump said, lacking clarity about the scope of broad pardons that could potentially affect more than 1,500 people prosecuted for participating in the riot.

Trump also criticized the Justice Department’s handling of the events, calling it the “only insurrection in history” without weapons.

The former president notably made a bold assertion against the FBI, accusing the bureau of withholding information about the person who planted pipe bombs near the Republican and Democratic National Committee headquarters on Jan. 5, 2021.

“The FBI knows who it is. The status of the FBI has gone down,” he asserted, claiming the agency’s credibility has been damaged under President Joe Biden and suggested his administration would investigate any alleged involvement by the bureau in the riot.

“We’re looking at it and other people are there, and 26, 28 people from the FBI came out very quietly, and nobody reported it,” Trump said. “But they had people in some form related to the FBI. They had four or five people strongly related to the FBI. We have to find out about that.”

Trump’s remarks follow last month’s inspector general report from the Biden Justice Department, which detailed the FBI’s use of confidential informants and prompted questions about their roles in the Jan. 6 protest.

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Trump repeatedly made comments condemning the treatment of Jan. 6 defendants during his 2024 presidential campaign but has maintained a vague approach to his plans, not specifying any number of pardons he may issue as he returns to the Oval Office at noon on Jan. 20.

While he stopped short of naming specific individuals who could receive pardons, his allies, including Article III Project founder Mike Davis, have pushed him to initiate broad pardons for anyone charged in relation to the protest and to commute the sentences for defendants facing years of prison time.