Florida governor Ron DeSantis said Thursday that he would look into pardoning many of the January 6 rioters who have been convicted of federal offenses if he were elected president.
During an appearance on The Clay Travis & Buck Sexton Show one day after he formally entered the 2024 presidential race, the newly minted presidential candidate was asked whether he would consider pardoning January 6 defendants, including former president Donald Trump, who is being investigated for his role on January 6.
“And so what I’m going to do is on Day One, I will have folks that will get together and look at all these cases [where] people are victims of weaponization or political targeting and we will be aggressive in issuing pardons,” DeSantis said on the podcast.
“I would say any example of disfavored treatment based on politics, or weaponization would be included in that review, no matter how small or how big,” he added.
More than 1,000 people have been arrested in connection with the riot at the Capitol, and roughly 485 people have been sentenced for crimes that occurred during the riot, the DOJ said earlier this month.
DeSantis said the FBI weaponized its authority in conducting the January 6-related investigations as well as targeting pro-life groups and parents at school board meetings.
“We’re going to find examples where the government’s been weaponized against disfavored groups, and we will apply relief as appropriate, but it will be done on a case-by-case basis,” he said.
On Wednesday, DeSantis decried the politicization of the FBI and DOJ and said that, if elected, he would fire FBI director Christopher Wray on his first day in the Oval Office.
DeSantis’s comments come days after newly unsealed court documents revealed the FBI misused a warrantless-surveillance tool against a variety of Americans, including January 6 suspects.
Last week, a whistleblower from the FBI’s Boston field office also testified that agents in Washington refused to share hours of video footage from the January 6 Capitol riot between the offices because there “may be” undercover officers or confidential human sources in the videos whose identities would need to be protected.
On Wednesday, DeSantis said he thinks the DOJ and FBI “have lost their way.”
“I think that they’ve been weaponized against Americans who think like me and you, and I think they’ve become very partisan,” he said during an appearance on Fox News. “Part of the reason that’s happened, Trey, is because Republican presidents have accepted the canard that the DOJ and FBI are independent,” DeSantis said. “They are not independent agencies. They are part of the executive branch. They answer to the elected president of the United States.”
DeSantis said he would clear out people who are not “doing the job and making sure they’re doing the people’s business and they’re not abusing their authority.”