“Trump’s gonna pardon me anyways,” a January 6 defendant said as he was being ushered to prison following a dramatic sentencing hearing on Friday — in a signal of escalating tensions in the January 6 proceedings mere weeks before President-elect Trump takes office.

And he may be right. In an appearance on “Meet the Press” Sunday, Trump told NBC’s Kristen Welker that he would likely pardon many of the January 6 defendants on day one of his second term. He argued that many have endured unduly harsh treatment in prison. “These people are living in hell,” Trump said.

The confident defendant, Philip Sean Grillo of Queens, New York, was sentenced to one year in prison by Judge Royce Lamberth of the D.C. District Court for offenses including entering and engaging in “disorderly and disruptive conduct” in a restricted building or grounds. 

The judge said that his case “exemplifies why even non-violent rioters merit punishment” and acknowledged that Grillo “did not directly disrupt the certification of the electoral vote, destroy public property, or attack law enforcement.” Yet he “emboldened the mass of individuals storming the Capitol, amplifying the mob mentality that overtook the rioters that day,” the judge noted.

Grillo encouraged rioters to “charge” as he entered the restricted federal grounds, court documents indicate, and said in a video that he was  “storming” the Capitol to “stop the steal.” 

“Even though Mr. Grillo himself was not violent that day, his mere presence in the mob gave the violent rioters the reassurance they needed that if they beat, maimed, and assaulted police officers, they would be cheered on as ‘patriots’ and ‘heroes’ by hundreds of like-minded individuals standing right behind them,” Judge Lamberth noted.

He compared the rioters that made up the “mob mentality” on January 6 to “billions of individual water drops” that make up a monsoon. Even if an individual defendant says that he did not “personally” disrupt the certification of the electoral vote, each individual “emboldened the next, even if only tacitly, simply by joining the mob.”

On January 6, Grillo stated in videos “We f— did it! We got to the Capitol building. We f—did it! We f— did it, baby!,” according to the federal government. “We stormed the Capitol. We shut it down! We did it! We shut the mother..!.” Another video depicts him smoking marijuana inside the Capitol, the Justice Department has said. 

Grillo’s comments on Friday about Trump’ pardoning him came as he was being handcuffed in the courtroom, as CNN reported, in a rare instance of a nonviolent offender being taken into custody immediately after sentencing. He also said that he was “mortified” and told the judge that he wished he “never went” to the Capitol that day.

The sentencing judge said that while January 6 may be a “distant, hazy memory” to many Americans, for others, such as Capitol Police Officers, it is a “day they will never forget.” Judge Lamberth acknowledged that everyone in the room was “aware that the President-elect has publicly contemplated pardoning people who participated in the Capitol Riots” but said he had “nothing to say about that decision.” 

The judge also acknowledged the frequent comparison among some in the public and the press that the Capitol Rioters have been “selectively targeted” while Black Lives Matter and pro-Palestinian protesters have been spared. Prosecutors have limited resources and it is generally their role to “make charging decisions,” he said, while the court’s job is to “impartially apply the law and dispense justice to whomever appears before it.”

He directed those who are “dissatisfied” by how the executive branch wields its prosecutorial power to express that at the “ballot box” rather than asking the courts to “serve as a counterweight to the executive by showing undue leniency in the cases before them.”

Trump, who campaigned on a promise to pardon his supporters who took part in the January 6 riots, has been relatively quiet on the topic since the election. His incoming press secretary, Karoline Leavitt, recently told Politico that Trump will “make pardon decisions on a case-by-case basis.”