OutKick founder Clay Travis had advice for President-elect Donald Trump on Wednesday. While speaking to Fox News host Jesse Watters, Travis said he wants Trump to “hit the ground running” once he returns to the White House, adding, “I want him to pardon all the January 6ers.”
After Watters clarified, “Every Jan 6’er? Even the ones that were slugging cops?” the sports media site owner replied, “Even those guys, Jesse.”
“Because if you compare the punishment they got for violent crime with what they are doing to other people in Washington, D.C., even those people have been punished excessively under the law,” Travis said. “I would do a blanket pardon, every single one of them done, and I would also pardon the mayor of New York City, Eric Adams.”
As far-fetched as the possibility could seem, Trump has repeatedly said that he’s interested in issuing pardons to everyone arrested during the Capitol attacks — in fact, he campaigned on the idea. In September 2022, Trump told conservative radio host Wendy Bell, “I mean full pardons with an apology to many. I will be looking very, very strongly about pardons, full pardons.”
He also said that he has provided financial support to many who were arrested: “I am financially supporting people that are incredible and they were in my office actually two days ago, so they’re very much in my mind. It’s a disgrace what they’ve done to them. What they’ve done to these people is disgraceful.”
Trump repeated this claim in 2024. “My first acts as your next President will be to Close the Border, DRILL, BABY, DRILL, and Free the January 6 Hostages being wrongfully imprisoned!” he wrote in a Truth Social post on March 11.
Over 1,500 people have been charged in relation to the 2021 insurrection and over 1,000 have pleaded guilty. Of those, so far 176 have been convicted. The FBI has labeled the events of the day as an act of domestic terrorism, and the subsequent DOJ investigation is the largest in U.S. history.
