Graham says Trump’s call to pardon Jan. 6 rioters ‘inappropriate’

Sen. Lindsey Graham (R-S.C.) said on Sunday that former President Trump’s suggestion that he would pardon Jan. 6, 2021, rioters if reelected is “inappropriate.” 

During Graham’s appearance on CBS’s “Face the Nation,” host Margaret Brennan played a clip of Trump speaking Saturday at a Texas rally, where he said he would treat the Capitol rioters “fairly.”

“If I run and I win, we will treat those people from Jan. 6 fairly,” Trump told the crowd. “We will treat them fairly, and if it requires pardons, we will give them pardons because they are being treated so unfairly.”

“No, I don’t want to send any signal that it was OK to defile the Capitol,” Graham told Brennan when asked if he agreed.

“There are other groups with causes that may want to go down to the violent path that these people get pardoned,” he added.

“I think it’s inappropriate. … I don’t want to do anything that would make this more likely in the future,” Graham told Brennan. 

The Republican senator added that he didn’t like it when Vice President Harris “and her associates and the people that work for her, her staffers, raised money to bail out the rioters who hit cops in the head and burned down stores” after sometimes violent demonstrations in the summer of 2020. 

“So I don’t want to do anything from raising bail to pardoning people who take the law into their own hands because it will make more violence more likely,” he said. “I want to deter people who did what on Jan. 6. And those who did it, I hope they go to jail and get the book thrown at them because they deserve it.”

Updated at 1:34 p.m.