Trump Claims The Jan. 6 Cop-Assaulters He Pardoned Were The Ones Assaulted

The president's latest assertion came as his White House touted his support for first responders.

ABOARD AIR FORCE ONE — President Donald Trump now claims that the domestic terrorists he pardoned who violently attacked police officers during his Jan. 6, 2021, coup attempt were actually the victims of that day.

“I pardoned people who were assaulted themselves. They were assaulted by our government,” he said in a half-hour news conference with the reporters traveling with him on his flight to the Super Bowl on Sunday.

“That’s who were assaulted and they were treated unfairly. There’s never been a group of people in this country outside of maybe one instance I can think of, but I won’t get into it, that were treated more horribly than the people of J6,” he continued. “So no, I didn’t assault. They didn’t assault. They were assaulted, and what I did was a great thing for humanity.”

Trump set free hundreds of his followers who had been convicted of assaulting police on Jan. 6 as part of his attempt to overturn the election he had lost and remain in office. That group was among the nearly 1,600 total pardons for Jan. 6 cases Trump issued on his first day in office, which included about 1,000 nonviolent offenders and about 200 accused police assaulters whose cases were still pending.

More than 140 police officers defending the Capitol from Trump’s mob were injured that day, some gravely. One died hours later, and four more died by suicide in the coming months. The mob’s behavior, using violence or the threat of violence to effect political change, is the definition of terrorism. And using violence or the threat of violence to remain in power, authoritarian experts say, meets the definition of a self-coup.