Trump vows to pardon Jan 6 defendants on Day One

President-elect Donald Trump said in an interview that aired on Sunday he would act on his first day in office to pardon rioters involved in the January 6, 2021 Capitol attack, further building expectations for a broad granting of clemency.

"I'm going to be acting very quickly, first day," Trump said on NBC News' Meet the Press with Kristen Welker when asked when he planned to pardon his supporters who were charged in the attack aimed at overturning his 2020 election defeat.

Trump told Welker that there could be "some exceptions" to his pardons if the individuals had acted "radical" or "crazy" during the assault, which left more than 140 police officers injured and led to several deaths.

But Trump described the prosecutions of his supporters as inherently corrupt and did not rule out pardoning the more than 900 defendants who had already pleaded guilty, including those accused of acting violently in the attack.

"I'm going to look at everything. We're going to look at individual cases," Trump said.

The comments - Trump's most detailed on the issue of pardons since he defeated Vice President Kamala Harris in the November 5 election - will likely add to already high expectations for broad action once Trump is sworn in to office on January 20.

Hopes among January 6 defendants and their supporters for broad-based clemency have been growing over the past week after President Joe Biden pardoned his son Hunter, marking a reversal from his pledge not to interfere with his son's criminal cases.

Biden said Hunter deserved a pardon because he was the victim of political persecution, an argument Trump will likely use to justify mass pardons. Some Biden critics said his decision would lessen the political cost for Trump.

Kimberly Wehle, a professor at the University of Baltimore School of Law, said she was worried broad amnesty for January 6 defendants would serve to wrongly incentivise the fomenting of unrest or even violence on behalf of a president.

"The idea that he's going to reward people for violating the law on his behalf in connection with an attempt to overthrow legitimate election results... that's not precedented," said Wehle, author of a recent book on presidential pardon power.

In what has been billed as America's largest-ever criminal investigation, at least 1,572 defendants have been charged in the January 6 attack, with crimes ranging from unlawfully entering restricted grounds to seditious conspiracy and violent assault.

Of that total, more than 1,251 have been convicted or pleaded guilty and 645 have been sentenced to prison, with punishments ranging from a few days to 22 years, according to the latest data from the Justice Department.

John Pierce, a lawyer who has represented dozens of January 6 defendants, urged Trump to issue a blanket pardon for all who were charged with participating in the riot.

"I think you would see a lot of unhappy people in the January 6 community" if pardons were granted on a case-by-case basis, he said.