For months, many Republicans on Capitol Hill said Donald Trump should only pardon the nonviolent offenders of the Jan. 6 attack. Everyone else, they said, should be on a “case-by-case basis.” Instead, Trump pardoned almost everyone — even the mob’s most notorious instigators, including those who assaulted law enforcement with weapons, threatened to kill elected officials and were charged with “seditious conspiracy.”
Hours after the mass pardon on Tuesday, Republican lawmakers were ready with a novel defense of Trump’s actions: It’s Joe Biden’s fault.
“I would like to have seen a case-by-case process,” Sen. Kevin Cramer told NOTUS. “But then I think, when President Biden pardoned the Jan. 6 committee for whatever reason and his entire family for whatever reason, suddenly it looks like there’s a lot of … a lot to be concerned about.”