Vice President Vance on Sunday defended President Trump’s decision to issue a blanket pardon for nearly all of those who were charged with crimes related to the riot at the Capitol on January 6, 2021 — including those who were convicted of violently attacking law enforcement officers. The vice president received fierce criticism from conservatives just a few weeks ago when he said that there “obviously” should not be pardons for the most violent offenders. 

Mr. Trump signed a blanket pardon for more than 1,500 individuals charged with crimes related to January 6, as well as commuted the sentences of those convicted of conspiring to overthrow the government, such as Stewart Rhodes — the Oath Keepers militia leader. 

The vice president previously said that “obviously” there should be no pardons for those who committed violent acts, but also argued that there was a “gray area” in deciding who would get relief. In an interview with CBS News’s Margarter Brennan on “Face the Nation” airing Sunday, Mr. Vance defended the pardons and commutations, saying that Mr. Trump believed there was no “due process” for those defendants. 

“Here’s the nature of the gray area: Merrick Garland’s Department of Justice denied constitutional protections in the prosecutions. There were double standards in how sentences were applied to the J6 protesters versus other groups,” the vice president said. “We looked at 1,600 cases and the thing that came out of it, Margaret, is that there was a massive denial of due process of liberty and a lot of people were denied their constitutional rights.”

When pressed about specific cases of individuals who beat police officers with objects and got lengthy prison sentences, Mr. Vance maintained that the pardons were more about the prosecutions over the last three years than they were about the violent acts themselves. 

“There’s an important issue here: there’s what the people actually did on January the 6th — and we’re not saying that everybody did everything perfectly — and then what did Merrick Garland’s Department of Justice do in unjustly prosecuting well over a thousand Americans in a way that was politically motivated?” Mr. Vance said. 

The vice president stated that while beating police officers is not justifiable, he claimed that the pardons were necessary because a “weaponized” Department of Justice never went after those who rioted in 2020. 

“Violence against a police officer is not justified, but that doesn’t mean that you should have Merrick Garland’s weaponized Department of Justice expose you to an incredibly unfair process, to denial of constitutional rights, and frankly, to a double standard that was not applied to many people, including, of course, the Black Lives Matter rioters who killed over two dozen people and never had the weight of a weaponized Department of Justice come against them,” Mr. Vance argued. “The pardon power is not just for people who are angels.”

Some of Mr. Vance’s fellow Republicans have not been as outspoken in defending the pardons, with some even saying that they never should have been issued. In an interview with “Meet the Press” on Sunday, a close ally of Mr. Trump’s — Senator Graham — called the mass pardons “a mistake.”

“I fear that you will get more violence. Pardoning the people who went into the Capitol and beat up a police officer violently I think was a mistake, because it seems to suggest that’s an okay thing to do. Kamala Harris wanted to raise bail money for people burning down Minneapolis. You know, Biden pardoned half his family going out the door. I think most Americans — if this continues — see this as an abuse of the pardon power,” Mr. Graham said.