One of President-elect Trump’s former campaign advisors said the incoming commander-in-chief didn’t promise to pardon all Capitol insurrectionists, as speculation swirls over how broad Trump’s promised Jan. 6 pardons might extend.
“He didn’t promise to pardon anybody. He said that he would look at it on a case-by-case basis, but just be factual those are the words,” David Urban, who worked on Trump’s 2016 campaign, said during a Monday appearance on CNN’s “The Source with Kaitlan Collins.”
The former president has promised to swiftly review the cases of those imprisoned for their actions on Jan. 6, 2021 during riots aiming to overturn the 2020 presidential election results.
Urban claimed some demonstrators were wrongfully arrested and injured while attending the staged insurrection.
“And just to be factual the only person that died on January 6, Ashli Babbitt, was the one person who died,” added Urban, who is now a CNN political commentator.
“She wouldn’t have died if a police officer didn’t wrongfully shoot her. I wish the January 6th committee would have done a full investigation for the American people to see and hear.”
Babbit was shot by a Capitol Police officer as she tried to climb through a shattered window near the Speaker’s Lobby.
While she was the only person killed during the attacks, a bipartisan Senate report said seven deaths were connected to the riots, including three police officers.
Collins and other panelists pushed back on Urban’s remarks, saying he was “splitting hairs” and minimizing the actions of others who gathered on that day.
“You can talk about Ashli Babbitt but that doesn’t discount the other actions of people,” Collins told Urban.
About 140 police officers were assaulted while attempting to protect lawmakers and the Capitol building, according to the Justice Department, which has prosecuted hundreds of Jan. 6 rioters over the past four years.
Trump’s plan to impart pardons on rioters has shaken Capitol Police who suffered life-altering injuries on that day.
Former Sergeant Aquilino Gonell and former Capitol police Officer Harry Dunn called the promised pardons a “betrayal.”
“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 in an interview with the Washington Post.
“And then Donald Trump is going to pardon them and say it’s okay, all is forgiven.”
Congress members who investigated the Capitol insurrection have strongly opposed pardons for rioters. However, Republicans who now control the House and Senate have suggested Trump will face little resistance regardless of how widely his pardons apply.
