Donald Trump said Saturday evening that if he makes another successful run at the White House, he will pardon his supporters who stormed the Capitol building in Washington last year.
Speaking at a rally in Conroe, Texas, Trump said he would make sure those charged in connection with the deadly January 6 riot were treated “fairly.”
“And if it requires pardons, we will give them pardons, because they are being treated so unfairly,” he said of his supporters, who stormed the building in an effort to block the certification of US President Joe Biden’s win.
Trump then attacked the House select committee probing the events of that day.
“This hasn’t happened to all of the other atrocities that took place recently. Nothing like this has happened. What that ‘unselect’ committee is doing and what the people are doing that are running those prisons — it’s a disgrace,” Trump told the crowd. “It’s a disgrace.”
According to The New York Times, about 40 pro-Trump rioters are being held in a District of Columbia jail.
Trump sketched out the beginnings of a 2024 campaign agenda, saying he would ban critical race theory — which views American history through the lens of racism — from classrooms, the military, and government on “the first day, first hour, if I decide to run and if we win.”
He vowed to fire “woke generals who only know how to lose” and to “ban men from participating in women’s sports.”
America, he said, does not belong to “corrupt radicals.”
Trump is facing a series of complex legal investigations that have also ensnared his family and many associates.
The probes, unfolding in multiple jurisdictions, consider everything from potential fraud and election interference to the role he played in the January 6 insurrection.
On Saturday Trump railed against the investigators and insisted, “There’s never been a witch hunt or a fishing expedition like this.”
“This has been going on as long as you’ve known me. It will continue as long as I’m leading in the polls like I am,” he said, adding: “In reality, they’re not after me, they’re after you.”
“If these radical, vicious, racist prosecutors do anything wrong or illegal, I hope we are going to have in this country the biggest protest we have ever had in Washington, DC, in New York, in Atlanta, and elsewhere,” he said.
Earlier this month, the committee asked Trump’s daughter to cooperate voluntarily with its inquiry.
The House select committee told Ivanka Trump — who was a senior adviser to her father at the time of the January 6 insurrection — it had evidence that she had pleaded with him to call off the violence as his supporters stormed Congress.
The committee investigating the violent insurrection has interviewed hundreds of witnesses, issued dozens of subpoenas and obtained tens of thousands of pages of records, including texts, emails, and phone records from people close to Trump, as well as thousands of pages of White House records that Trump fought to shield from public view.
