On March 25, 2025, American President Donald Trump told Greg Kelly of Newsmax that he was planning to establish a fund that would help the rioters of January 6, whom he had pardoned for storming the Capitol back in 2021. Talking about the matter, Trump said, “I took care of them.”
He further added, “I said I was going to, and I did.” Kelly then proceeded to ask if there was any possibility of offering them any kind of compensation for the loss of opportunities and incomes that they had to go through, and to this, Trump said, “Well, there’s talk about that; we have a lot of people talk about that, lot of people that are in government now talk about it because they — a lot of people in government really like that group of people. They were patriots as far as I was concerned. I talk about them a lot.”
Trump says he’s looking at setting up some sort of government “compensation fund” for the January 6 criminals that he pardoned pic.twitter.com/3UUeRiNEKo
— Aaron Rupar (@atrupar) March 26, 2025
It should be noted here that initially, Trump’s own administration was not aware or on board with Trump pardoning these rioters as a lot of them already had criminal records against them, and they had also attacked police officers while attacking the Capitol. Around a week before they were pardoned, JD Vance had said, “If you committed violence on that day, obviously you shouldn’t be pardoned.”
A few days after that, Pam Bondi, Trump’s nominee for Attorney General, agreed with a Democrat Senator as she was asked to condemn the violence that their rioters had pulled off. Bondi said that she was ready to look into those 1,500 riot-linked cases individually, adding, “I do not agree with violence against any police officer.”
However, then came Donald Trump, who took a completely different approach to this case. As reported by BBC, “He issued a handful of commutations and a blanket pardon that effectively freed all the rioters and erased the work of the largest criminal investigation in US history.”
He passed an executive order that offered the rioters, along with their supporters, almost everything that they had demanded apart from monetary compensation. He had said, These people have already served years in prison, and they’ve served them viciously. It’s a disgusting prison. It’s been horrible. It’s inhumane. It’s been a terrible, terrible thing.”
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Now, with Trump’s idea of offering those rioters monetary compensation, that demand of them will also be fulfilled. However, some of those rioters who were freed following Trump’s order have again been arrested on different charges. Among them is a Houston man who was rearrested on charges of online solicitation of a minor. Another person was shot fatally just days after his pardon as he was tried to be rearrested on charges unrelated to the capitol case.
Lisa Gilbert, co-president of Public Citizen, had opposed the pardons during that time and said, “The overall consensus was that we would see a differentiation between those who committed violent acts and those who did not. Donald Trump ran for office on law and order, so it’s shocking and upsetting to see him taking action to pardon violent criminals”
Now that Trump has decided to offer monetary support to these rioters, it remains to be seen how the opposition and other concerned people react to this.
