Republican senators won't stand in the way of President-elect Donald Trump's campaign promise to pardon non-violent Jan. 6 defendants, if not investigate criminal liability for House Jan. 6 Select committee members.
"As we found from Hunter Biden, the president's pardon authority is pretty extensive," incoming Senate Majority Leader John Thune, R-S.D., told The Hill. "That's obviously a decision he'll have to make."
Thune also declined to reject Trump's statement that Jan. 6 panel wrongdoing should be investigated and "go to jail."
"I think with respect to the committee, if there's something that needs to be looked at there, I'm sure the appropriate authorities will look at it," Thune said. "I don't have a comment really on those statements."
Sen. John Cornyn, R-Texas, noted that pardons are in the hands of the president without Congress' influence.
"We've seen what President Biden did with his son, and presidents have that prerogative and it really doesn't involve Congress," Cornyn said.
Sen. Lindsey Graham, R-S.C., said he might consider a line drawn for those violent protesters getting pardoned.
"We'll see what he does," he told The Hill. "It's been four or five years [since the attack]. The ones that hurt cops, they'd be in a different category for me, but we'll leave that up to him."
Graham, though, does not believe the House Jan. 6 Select Committee members need to be investigated for wrongdoing.
"I don't see a reason for them to go to jail," he said.
Sen. Bill Cassidy, R-La., voted to convict Trump for "incitement of insurrection" after Trump left office — one of seven GOP senators to do so and one of three remaining in the Senate — and he, too, is in a wait-and-see on pardons.
"He said he would pardon some of them: I don't know what 'some of them' means, and so I would just like to see what that means before I comment on them," Cassidy told The Hill.
Eric Mack ✉
Eric Mack has been a writer and editor at Newsmax since 2016. He is a 1998 Syracuse University journalism graduate and a New York Press Association award-winning writer.
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