Former Vice President Mike Pence told a CNN town hall in Des Moines, Iowa on June 7 that he will not be granting pardons to any of the individuals who have been charged for taking part in the Jan. 6, 2021 breach of the U.S. Capitol.
Pence officially entered the 2024 presidential race on Wednesday with a video announcement on Twitter in which he criticized President Joe Biden and the “radical left” for weakening the United States both at home and abroad.
Speaking at the town hall in Iowa, the former vice president sought to distance himself from former President Donald Trump on an array of issues including the events of Jan. 6, Russian President Vladimir Putin, and government spending.
Trump announced he is running for president again in November.
Asked on Wednesday whether he would pardon any of the individuals who were arrested and charged over the Jan. 6 breach—as Trump has suggested he will—Pence made it clear he would not.
“On the day of Jan. 6, I issued a tweet demanding that people leave the Capitol and end the violence,” Pence said. “I said that those that failed to do that should be prosecuted to the fullest extent of the law, and I continue to believe that today.”
“We cannot ever allow what happened on January 6 to happen again in the heart of our democracy,” he continued. “I’ll stand by the decisions and the due process of court in our laws. I have no interest or no intention of pardoning those that assaulted police officers or vandalized our Capitol. They need to be answerable to the law.”
Trump to Pardon ‘Many’
In contrast, Trump said during his own CNN town hall in New Hampshire in May that he would be “inclined to pardon many” of the individuals charged with crimes during the Jan. 6 breach.
More than 1,000 individuals across nearly all 50 states have been charged in connection with the breach of the Capitol building, according to the Department of Justice, including nearly 350 people who were charged with assaulting or impeding law enforcement.
