Jan. 6 committee chair says he'd accept preemptive pardon if Biden offers

Rep. Bennie Thompson (D-Miss.), former chair of the Jan. 6 committee, said in a Thursday interview that he would accept a preemptive pardon from President Biden if he offered one.

CNN's Jim Acosta asked Thompson whether he wanted Biden to extend the pardon offer — in light of recent reporting that Biden was considering using the pardon power to protect those he feared may be targeted in Trump's second term.

“The president, it’s his prerogative,” Thompson said about whether he wants Biden to preemptively pardon him. “If he offers it, to me or other members of the committee, I think it, I would accept it, but it's his choice.”

Thompson noted the committee's staff and the witnesses similarly did "nothing wrong," and he fiercely defended the committee's work.

“I think the staff of the committee who did a wonderful job; I think the witnesses who were primarily Republicans did a great job under oath. They were not found to have perjured themselves or anything like that,” Thompson continued.

“We've had two years of review by Republican chairpersons. They found nothing wrong,” he said. “We stand by the work of the committee. Our committee did a wonderful job. We shared it with the public, and all the public has to do is to read the report that we filed based on our report.”

Trump has frequently targeted members of the former House committee that investigated the Capitol attack and Trump's role in the lead-up to that day.

Trump repeated his grievances about the panel in his first postelection interview on Sunday, mentioning Thompson and former Vice Chair Liz Cheney (R-Wyo.) by name and saying he thinks the panel members should be jailed.

“Honestly, they should go to jail,” Trump told NBC News’s Kristen Welker, referring to the panel’s members. Trump added, however, that he would not instruct his top law enforcement officials to jail the panel’s members.

On whether he's concerned about Trump's remarks, Thompson said Thursday that Congress established the panel and that members were following the law by serving on the committee.

“We operated based on our direction from Congress,” Thompson said. “I hope the president would take that into consideration.”

Thompson said it was “so unfortunate” that disagreeing with someone could raise the prospect of jail time, saying that goes against American values.

“But to be honest with you, Jim, we've not done anything wrong,” Thompson continued. “What we did was, in fact, what the law prescribed, what the resolution we were given, and we're comfortable with our report. There's nothing that we omitted in the report or anything like that.”

“Being in disagreement with a person is not a reason to lock them up. This is the House, where we debate issues, where we debate laws. Sometimes you're right, sometimes you're wrong. That doesn't mean you're illegal, and it doesn't mean that because you're wrong in the eyes of someone, you should go to jail. That's just so unfortunate, and that's not who we are as Americans.”

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