Donald Trump told NBC in a wide-ranging interview that he believes all members of the January 6 committee should be thrown in jail – though he stopped short of outright threatening to use the Justice Department to do so.
“Honestly, they should go to jail,” he told Meet the Press moderator Kristen Welker in an interview about his “day one” plans, airing Sunday.
When asked about Liz Cheney – who was a GOP lawmaker, served as vice chair of the committee and who campaigned with Kamala Harris in the 2024 race – Trump said “everybody” on the panel should be jailed “for what they did.”
Despite this, Trump insisted he would not direct his FBI director pick Kash Patel or attorney general pick Pam Bondi to pursue the committee members or any other political enemies of his.
“I want her to do what she wants to do. I’m not going to instruct her to do it,” he said of Bondi.
“I’m not looking to go back into the past,” he added, when asked if he would seek to prosecution Biden family members, including President Joe Biden.
“I’m looking to make our country successful. Retribution will be through success.”
The president-elect made headlines throughout his 2024 campaign, much like his 2016 bid for the presidency, by threatening to jail his political opponents. Most recently in September, he wrote in a Truth Social post that “those people that CHEATED will be prosecuted,” referring to top Democratic leaders such as Biden and former House Speaker Nancy Pelosi.
And while he did not follow through with his explicit threat to jail Hillary Clinton following his 2016 election victory, his new focus on installing loyalists at top agencies including the FBI and Justice Department have led many to wonder if the threats are real this time.
Despite losing his 2020 reelection bid to Joe Biden, Trump maintained (and still maintains) that he was the rightful winner. His fact-free claims of widespread fraud were weaponized to instigate a mob attack against the US Capitol on January 6 2021, as throngs of his supporters attempted to stop Congress from certifying the transfer of power.
Trump went on to be prosecuted for those actions in a now-defunct investigation ended by the Justice Department after his 2024 election victory, as well as by Congress in the form of the bipartisan committee to investigate January 6. Members of the committee compiled countless hours of video evidence and testimony which painted a horrifying scene of the violence that played out during the attack as well as the depth of knowledge Trump and his team had to predict that the attack would occur.
In his interview airing Sunday, Trump also said he’d pardon some of those rioters on his “first day” in office.
“I’m going to be acting very quickly. First day,” Trump said, adding later about their imprisonment that “they’ve been in there for years, and they’re in a filthy, disgusting place that shouldn’t even be allowed to be open.”
Patel, the president-elect’s pick for the FBI, has called for the government to go after journalists with criminal and civil legal action. Patel has also called for the FBI itself to be dismantled following its investigation of the 2016 Trump campaign’s alleged ties to Russian operatives.
Biden moved to shield his family from some of that danger this past week, and issued a blanket pardon for his son Hunter covering any crimes committed over an 11-year period. The adult son of the incumbent president has a history of drug abuse and at the time of his pardoning was due for sentencing on tax and gun charges.
Trump and his allies attacked the pardon as symbolic of Washington corruption while the president’s allies did the opposite of rush to his defense: many Democrats criticized the president for giving the appearance of a separate standard of justice for his family members, given that the facts of his son’s criminal case are not in dispute.
But the president does have some defenders who have characterized the move as necessary to shield the president’s family from political retribution from the incoming administration.
