Former House Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D-Calif.) said on Sunday that the violence of the Jan. 6, 2021 attack on the U.S. Capitol “didn’t end that day.”
“It didn't end that day,” Pelosi told CBS News’s Margaret Brennan on “Face the Nation." "As you know, [President-elect Trump] called out to these people to continue their violence, my husband being a victim of all of that, and it still — he still has injuries from that attack.”
The fourth anniversary of the Jan. 6, 2021 attack occurs this Monday. Trump has promised to grant clemency to rioters who showed up at the Capitol that day as Congress certified President Biden's 2020 election win. The president-elect has also implied that some pardons could be issued in the first few hours of his second term.
“It's really a strange person who's going to be President of the United States, who thinks that it's okay to pardon people who are engaged in an attack,” Pelosi said in her “Face the Nation” appearance.
Some former Capitol Police officers who were present amid the Jan. 6 attack have said that Trump’s commitment to pardon rioters is “a betrayal.”
“It’s a betrayal, a stab in the heart,” former Sergeant Aquilino Gonell, who received long-lasting injuries on the day of the attack, said to The Washington Post.
Gonell’s fellow former Capitol Police officer, Harry Dunn, has said that forgiving insurrectionists for violent actions displays a lack of accountability from the commander-in-chief.
“They broke the law, violated police officers, attacked us, and then went back and said we did it in the name of Donald Trump,” Dunn said. “And then Donald Trump is going to pardon them and say it’s okay, all is forgiven.”
The Hill has reached out to the Trump transition team for comment.
