Sen. Thom Tillis (R-N.C.) on Tuesday said it was a “bad idea” for President Trump to pardon individuals who were convicted of assaulting police officers during the Jan. 6, 2021, attack on the U.S. Capitol.
“Anybody who was convicted of assault on a police officer, I just can’t get there at all. I think it was a bad idea,” Tillis told a reporter for Spectrum News.
But Tillis defended Trump’s pardon of Jan. 6 protesters who entered the Capitol illegally but didn’t assault police or destroy property.
“Many of them probably was the right thing to do. They made a bad a bad choice,” he said.
But Tillis said Trump’s sweeping pardons and sentence commutations for more than 1,500 people convicted of Jan. 6-related crimes must be viewed in the context of former President Joe Biden’s pardon of his son Hunter, who was convicted on tax- and gun-related charges, and who pardoned five family members minutes before Trump was sworn in as president.
Tillis on that point echoed Senate Majority Leader John Thune (R-S.D.), who told reporters Tuesday that Biden had “opened the door on this.”
“We said all along that Biden opened the door on this,” he said while walking to his office, followed by several television crews.
Sen. Susan Collins (R-Maine) told a reporter for CNN Tuesday that she would be disappointed if Trump pardoned people convicted of assaulting police but said she would study the full extent of his pardons.
She also cited Biden’s pardons of Hunter Biden and five family members he preemptively pardoned, including his brother James, moments before Trump was sworn into office.
