Vice president-elect Vance says that “obviously” anyone who committed violent acts at the Capitol on January 6, 2021 should not receive a pardon from President Trump, which he has promised to issue possibly within the first few minutes of his new administration. Mr. Vance did caution that there is some “gray area” in the questions about violent acts, however. 

The defendants and convicts who have faced ramifications for their actions at the Capitol more than four years ago have become a cause célèbre in many conservative circles. At his earlier rallies in the 2024 presidential race, Trump would often play a rendition of the Star-Spangled Banner called Justice for All sung by a group of prisoners held at a Washington, D.C. jail for their actions at the Capitol that day. 

Mr. Vance says he is more concerned about getting relief for those individuals who were charged with crimes like trespassing or entering a restricted area. According to one calculation by the Lawfare Institute, 38 percent of the more than 1,500 charged with crimes related to January 6 were charged with assaulting or impeding the actions of law enforcement officers. 

“Look, if you protested peacefully on January the 6th, and you’ve had Merrick Garland’s Department of Justice treat you like a gang member, you should be pardoned,” Mr. Vance told Fox News Sunday. “If you committed violence on that day, obviously you shouldn’t be pardoned — and there’s a little bit of a gray area there.

“We’re very much committed to the equal administration of law, and there are a lot of people, we think, in the wake of January the 6th, that were prosecuted unfairly,” he added. 

The Justice Department is not giving up its fight to find and prosecute suspects even though Trump won the platform of pardoning the vast majority of those now in prison. On the four-year anniversary of January 6 earlier this month, the Justice Department sent out a memo its efforts to investigate and prosecute those defendants, and asked the public for additional help in locating known fugitives and identifying others from videos taken at the Capitol on January 6.

According to the DOJ, 1,583 individuals have been charged with crimes related to January 6, including more than 600 facing charges stemming from altercations with law enforcement and 174 defendants charged with using a deadly or dangerous weapon in the Capitol. No single person has yet to be found not guilty on all charges at trial, with more than 1,000 pleading guilty to their personal charges and more than 200 being found guilty at trial. Of all defendants, 1,100 have been sentenced, with 667 being given prison time for their crimes. 

Trump has not been as explicit as his own vice president was on Sunday. When asked on January 7 if he was considering pardons for violent offenders, Trump did not rule it out. “Well, we’re looking at it and we have other people in there,” Trump said of the defendants. “We’ll be looking at the whole thing, but I’ll be making major pardons, yes.”

Some of the more high-profile offenders are those who themselves did not commit violent acts or even enter the Capitol that day. Militia leaders like the Oath Keepers’ Steward Rhodes and the Proud Boys’ Enrique Tarrio, who are both now serving lengthy prison sentences after being found guilty on a number of charges related to seditious conspiracy, did not engage in violence on that day at the Capitol, and therefore could qualify for the non-violent Trump pardon list.

Mr. Vance touched on a number of other subjects when he sat for his interview on Sunday, including the possibility of America purchasing or absorbing territories like Greenland or the Panama Canal. The vice president-elect said that no military force would be used. 

“I think there is actually a real opportunity here for us to take leadership to protect American security, to ensure those incredible natural resources are developed, and that’s what Donald Trump is good at,” Mr. Vance said.