U.S. Sen. Lindsey Graham said officials who investigated the 2021 attack on the U.S. Capitol by Donald Trump supporters should not be jailed — the second time the Republican is in office. Despite previous claims.
In a Sunday interview on NBC’s Meet the Press, show host Kristen Welker told Graham that anyone involved in the investigation into the Jan. 6 attack on the Capitol “should go to jail.”7 I asked him if he agreed with President Trump’s claims on the show the day before.
“No,” said Graham, South Carolina’s senior senator and ranking member of the chamber’s Judiciary and Budget committees.
Welker directed the question to Graham in a segment meant to elicit quick answers, which she acknowledged by saying, “Okay. That was very clear and concise.”
The exchange was an example of how Graham, while generally serving as a staunch ally, has occasionally publicly opposed President Trump. The exchange also came amid a broader political dialogue about who should be pardoned in connection with the deadly attack on Congress. This includes the suicide of a traumatized police officer.
President Trump has promised to begin his second term in office in January 2025 by pardoning the perpetrators of the attacks, with some exceptions. On December 8, he was arrested by his supporters in connection with a violent and desperate attempt to keep him in the White House after losing the presidency to Joe Biden in 2020. told Mr. Welker how they were pressured to accept guilty pleas.
Trump, who won the Oval Office in November against Vice President Kamala Harris, directed his second administration to arrest elected officials who investigated the Capitol attack. He denied ever intending to do so, and federal criminal charges against him were dismissed. Nevertheless, he got Welker to say, “Honestly, they should go to jail.”
Liberal U.S. Sen. Bernie Sanders appeared separately on Meet the Press on Sunday, saying that Biden would issue preemptive pardons to those who investigated the Capitol attack, as others have suggested. He said people should “very seriously consider” giving. Sanders did not name them, but a week earlier Trump had interviewed Bennie Thompson and Liz Cheney, the former chair and vice chair of the House committee convened to conduct the investigation. named.
“We’re not going to arrest the elected officials who take on the investigation,” Sanders said, adding that doing so “is the essence of authoritarianism (and) dictatorship.”
Sanders also said, “I just heard Lindsey Graham say that, and I don’t think Trump’s idea will go very far.”
More than 1,250 people have either pleaded guilty or been sentenced for the January 6 attack. At least 645 people were sentenced to prison terms ranging from a few days to 22 years.
In a Dec. 8 interview with Welker, Trump also criticized Biden’s recent pardon of his son Hunter, even though he criticized his conviction for lying on his gun application. He said these convictions were due to a “very corrupt system” that was suppressed through pardons. as tax evasion.
“I know the system,” said Trump himself, who was found guilty in New York state court in May of falsifying business records to conceal hush money payments to adult film actor Stormy Daniels. He received it and said:
