Now that Donald Trump is returning to the Oval Office and has pledged to reform the Justice Department, Joe Biden is reportedly considering preemptive pardons to people Democrats claim Trump plans to seek retribution against. Among those are J6 Committee members Rep. Bennie Thompson (D-Miss.) and former Rep. Liz Cheney (R. Wyo.).
Of course, if they did nothing wrong, why would they need pardons?
The answer, of course, is that the members of the January 6 Committee did commit some serious crimes in their quest to destroy Donald Trump.
We know that Democrats have long relied on a one-sided narrative about the January 6 Capitol riot. It was all by design. Nancy Pelosi took the unprecedented move to handpick every member of the January 6 Committee in order to have the most partisan committee possible, free to craft the narrative they chose. And they took advantage of this.
The committee selectively edited evidence, including text messages, to fit its agenda in the hopes of undermining Trump and blocking his return to office. Upon the GOP's victory in the House, the committee reportedly erased records to conceal their actions.
It should come as no surprise that Thompson, the chairman of the J6 Committee, is now saying that he’d accept a preemptive pardon from Joe Biden.
“The president, it’s his prerogative,” Thompson told CNN’s Jim Acosta. “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 insists that the committee’s staff and witnesses did “nothing wrong.”
“I think the staff of the committee 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 claimed.
This, of course, raises an obvious question: why would a lawmaker who claims everything he did was above board even entertain the idea of needing a pardon? Thompson, who chaired the January 6 Committee, insists that the panel’s work was legal and thorough, so he ought to be insulted by the idea of needing a pardon in the first place.
"For what they did, honestly, they should go to jail," Trump told NBC’s Kristen Welker earlier this week. Though he assured Welker he wouldn't ask anyone in his administration to target J6 committee members.
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Thompson claims that the J6 Committee was merely following Congress’s directives, but that claim rings hollow, given the partisan nature of the panel’s creation and conduct.
“But to be honest with you, Jim, we’ve not done anything wrong,” Thompson told Acosta. “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.”
He called Trump’s remarks about potential jail time for committee members “so unfortunate,” framing them as an attack on American values.
Thompson’s claim that the January 6 investigation was about debating issues and respecting differing opinions is laughably disingenuous. He said, “Being in disagreement with a person is not a reason to lock them up” as if Trump’s criticism is rooted in nothing more than policy disputes. But this was never about simple disagreements. The January 6 Committee wasn’t convened to foster dialogue or uncover unbiased truths — it was a calculated effort to damage Donald Trump and his supporters, even if that meant manipulating the facts.
Thompson’s lofty rhetoric about American values doesn’t square with the committee’s actions, which included selectively editing footage, doctoring evidence, and presenting a one-sided narrative designed to push a predetermined political objective. If Thompson really believed everything he and the committee did was above board, he'd laugh off the need for a pardon.
