It’s no surprise that newly elected U.S. Senator Adam Schiff (D-CA), who as a Congressman was one of President Trump’s chief antagonists in the House, slammed Trump for pardoning approximately 1,500 January 6 “hostages” — as Trump calls them — men and women who pleaded guilty or were found so by a jury for January 6 crimes. Schiff said: “No review. No accountability. Nothing.”
Yet there is some opposition to Trump’s move across the aisle, too, on the Republican side. As seen in the video below, provided by Spectrum News reporter Reuben Jones, Republican Senator Thom Tillis of North Carolina also disagrees with the blanket clemency grant.
Tillis said: “Anybody who is convicted of assault on a police officer, I can’t get there, at all. I think it was a bad idea.” Tillis — not a frequent Trump critic — also said: “We can’t have a story about pardons without talking about the nonsense Biden did on his way out the door.”
I spoke with Republican Sen. Thom Tillis about President Trump's pardons of January 6 defendants…
— Reuben Jones (@ReubenJones1) January 21, 2025
"Anybody who is convicted of assault on a police officer, I can't get there, at all. I think it was a bad idea."#ncpol pic.twitter.com/qtqupFquMn
Before Trump was inaugurated, Trump’s own Vice President JD Vance struck the same note as Tillis, failing to envision pardons that would include clemency for violent Jan 6 actors. See Vance below on Fox.
JD Vance on January 6 pardons: "If you committed violence on that day, obviously you shouldn't be pardoned, and there's a little bit of a gray area there." pic.twitter.com/wYTH8se9zM
— Aaron Rupar (@atrupar) January 12, 2025
[Note: Tillis voted against creating an independent commission to investigate the January 6 attack on the Capitol, but in August 2021, he said, “many involved needed to be held accountable and go to prison.”]
Asked if the Senate needs to look at the power of the pardon in the presidency, Tillis replied: “I think it’s a legit question because we can’t get into this cycle where presidents are, you know, pardoning their friends, creating respective pardons for charges that haven’t even yet have been applied. I don’t think that’s what the founding fathers had in mind.”
Note: Presidents have been issuing pardons since 1796. George Washington issued the first one after the Whiskey Rebellion in Pennsylvania.
Pardons are a powerful tool — and the cycle, as Tillis calls it, isn’t new. At the end of his first presidency, Trump pardoned fellow New York real estate developer Charles Kushner (father of Trump’s son-in-law Jared Kushner), who in 2005 was convicted of illegal campaign contributions, tax evasion, and witness tampering. In his second administration, Trump nominated Kushner as US Ambassador to France.
