Capitol Police Chief J. Thomas Manger decried President-elect Donald Trump's promise to pardon many of the Jan. 6 defendants, saying clemency for people who assault police would send a message that the safety of officers does not matter.
"What message does that send?" Manger said in a Sunday interview with The Washington Post. "What message does that send to police officers across this nation, if someone doesn't think that a conviction for an assault or worse against a police officer is something that should be upheld, given what we ask police officers to do every day?"
"This is not about any particular president," he said. "It's not about any particular pardon. It's about police officers who are asked to do the things that they're asked to do, and the community supporting them when they're hurt, injured, assaulted, or killed."
Manger, a 46-year police veteran, was hired after the Jan. 6, 2021, breach of the U.S. Capitol that included assaults on at least 140 police officers.
Of the nearly 1,600 Jan. 6 defendants, about 600 were reportedly charged with felony assault or obstruction of police during a civil disorder.
The incoming Trump administration could opt to drop charges against the approximately 300 defendants who are still awaiting trial, around 180 of whom are charged with assaulting or obstructing police, according to the Post. Another 200 people have been identified by the FBI for possible prosecution, including about 60 for assaulting or obstructing law enforcement.
Trump has said he would begin issuing pardons for Jan. 6 participants on the first day of his new term but has not indicated whether he would pardon those defendants who pleaded guilty.
"I'm going to do case-by-case, and if they were nonviolent, I think they've been greatly punished," he told Time magazine in late November.
In an email, incoming White House press secretary Karoline Leavitt told the Post that Trump "will pardon Americans who were denied due process and unfairly prosecuted by the weaponized Department of Justice."
Manger also said that pardoning people who assault police officers runs the risk of politicizing the response of law enforcement when quelling violent protests.
"I just think that there's a line that you cross when you assault a police officer, injure a police officer, kill a police officer, that it should be looked at very carefully, because pardoning someone who does something like that sends a message to every single law enforcement officer in this country that you may or may not really matter, depending on someone's political outlook or depending on if what you were involved with involves the wrong person's family," he said.
Former Capitol Police Sgt. Aquilino Gonell also criticized Trump's pledge to pardon Jan. 6 defendants in an opinion piece published on Sunday in The New York Times.
In his essay, Gonell detailed the beating he suffered at the hands of the Capitol protesters on Jan. 6, 2021, saying his "hand, foot, and shoulder were wounded" and he thought he was "going to die and never make it home to see my wife and young son."
"Over the last four years, it's been devastating to me to hear Donald Trump repeat his promise to pardon insurrectionists on the first day he's back in office," Gonell wrote.
Releasing those who assaulted police from their sentences "would be a desecration of justice," Gonell said, and he argued that if Trump is sincere about wanting to heal the fractures in "our divided nation, he'll let their convictions stand."