| Speaker | Time | Text |
|---|---|---|
|
unidentified
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Jefferson Davis had been allowed by Lincoln to frame the war as a noble white southern fight for independence. | |
| Pure and simple. | ||
| But from the moment that Lincoln said no, you, Jefferson Davis, and your commander-in-chief, Robert E. Lee, have attacked the North, which is what they did in September of 1862. | ||
| It's the equivalent of Pearl Harbor, if you like. | ||
| Once you attack the North, you change the whole game. | ||
| Nigel Hamilton with his book, Lincoln vs. Davis, Sunday night at 8 p.m. Eastern on C-SPAN's Q ⁇ A. You can listen to Q ⁇ A and all of our podcasts on our free C-SPAN Now app. | ||
| USA Today Justice Department correspondent Bart Jansen joins us now amid a week where there's been no lack of news on your beat. | ||
| I want to start on the January 6th pardons. | ||
| At this point, is there anyone who's been convicted of some crime related to January 6th that hasn't had their sentence pardoned or commuted by President Trump? | ||
|
unidentified
|
I think that's right. | |
| I think it's all of them. | ||
| The wording of the pardon was very broad, basically pardoning anyone associated with actions on January 6th at the Capitol, with the exception of the 14 commutations. | ||
| And he said he might review those and come back and perhaps pardon those people later. | ||
| What is a commutation? | ||
| What's the difference? | ||
|
unidentified
|
Pardon is just full release from the charges and any punishment that stemmed from them. | |
| Commutation is basically a shortening of the sentence. | ||
| There were folks, maybe hundreds of people in jail, and so all of the prison and all of them were or are in the midst of being released. | ||
| We've heard many times how the January 6th investigations were the biggest Justice Department investigations in Justice Department history. | ||
| Are there any cases still pending? | ||
| Are all of those now wiped away as well? | ||
|
unidentified
|
As I understand it, all of those charges are also being wiped out with the pardons. | |
| There was actually a trial underway here in D.C. on Monday and Tuesday. | ||
| They go to trial on Monday. | ||
| On Tuesday morning, the judge, without comment, dismissed the case. | ||
| And so that was a father-son team. | ||
| And so their case was over. | ||
| They had said after it actually happened on Tuesday that they had, when they heard Trump's announcement late Monday, that they cracked open a bottle of champagne to celebrate. | ||
| So yeah, the trials, all the court action is also ending. | ||
| You said the judge did it without comment, but there have been judges who've been making comments leading up to January the 20th, the inauguration of President Trump and the expected clemency for January 6th, people who've been convicted of crimes. | ||
| What did some of those judges say? | ||
|
unidentified
|
Well, that's right. | |
| Several of the judges, they've been going through these cases for four years. | ||
| They have seen the details of the accusations. | ||
| And in fact, more than 1,000 people were convicted, most by pleas, more than 1,000 by guilty pleas, and another 260 or so by contested trials. | ||
| Also the judges, even Trump appointees, expressed frustration with essentially freeing, ignoring, abandoning these cases, particularly with a blanket pardon because this pardon just said anybody charged from the January 6th riot would be pardoned. | ||
| And typically with pardons, most pardons are handled by an individual case-by-case review. | ||
| That doesn't appear to have happened in this case. | ||
| And so judges expressed some frustration from the bench as they were completing cases, issuing sentences, because many of the defendants were asking, hey, he's about to take office. | ||
| He has said he will pardon us. | ||
| Can't you postpone this to see how it turns out? | ||
| The Justice Department lawyers said, well, that's speculative. | ||
| We don't know what he's going to do. | ||
| Well, he did what Trump did, what he said he was going to do, and they have all been pardoned. | ||
| Also, reaction from the police unions, including police unions that supported Donald Trump in campaign 2024. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Yeah, that's right. | |
| We had a statement issued yesterday from the International Association of Chiefs of Police and the Fraternal Order of Police. | ||
| They said that they have been supporters of Trump, that they have a good relationship with him, but they expressed disappointment with the pardons. | ||
| They said nobody who attacked police officers should have been pardoned and that they should have served their full terms. | ||
| There was something like 600 of the defendants were charged with either assaulting or interfering with police on that day. | ||
| And about 140 police were injured during the riot. | ||
| So there's some frustration and disappointment among police officers who were defending the Capitol on that day. | ||
| Also, those unions, though, frustrated by some of Joe Biden's pardons at the end of his presidency, including Louis Pelletier. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Who's he? | |
| He was an activist in Native American affairs who in 1975 was convicted of shooting to death two FBI agents, and he has been serving a life sentence and he was given a commutation, I believe it was. | ||
| So his advocates had said he was suffering poor health, and so he is being released after 50 years in prison. | ||
| One of the op-eds in today's papers about that specific pardon coming from Richard Stout in the pages of the Washington Times, just to show viewers, Biden kicks the FBI in the teeth on the way out the door, thumbing his nose at the cause of justice, writing about Louis Pelletier. | ||
| Staying on Biden for a second, these last-minute pardons from President Biden, how unexpected or expected were they? | ||
| And what is the point of a preemptive pardon? | ||
|
unidentified
|
Well, preemptive pardon is to prevent any potential future charges against the person being pardoned. | |
| The big case that people will remember was when President Gerald Ford pardoned his predecessor Richard Nixon to avoid any kind of lingering charges or trial out of the Watergate era about 50 years ago. | ||
| In this case, Biden extended pardons for nonviolent, potential nonviolent crimes since 2014 for a handful of his relatives. | ||
| The most significant would be James Biden, his brother, had been investigated for his overseas business deals with and without the president's former president's son, Hunter Biden, in Ukraine, China, and elsewhere. | ||
| The other pardons went to his wife, the president's sister, Valerie, and her husband and another brother, Francis. | ||
| But the one that had faced accusations was James Biden for those business deals. | ||
| The main accusation, House Republicans urged the Justice Department to investigate and potentially charge him for lying to them about a meeting that he says he didn't attend. | ||
| Other witnesses said he did attend in, I believe it was 2014 or no, 2017 for that meeting at a hotel in Los Angeles. | ||
| And he said he wasn't there. | ||
| The other witnesses said he was, and there is some documentary evidence that he was. | ||
| And so if you wanted to investigate that, that is something that the former president has eliminated. | ||
| Whether it's the Biden pardons or the J-6 pardons, what's been the most interesting reaction that you've seen? | ||
| We've shown viewers some of the op-eds in just today's papers. | ||
| What's been the most interesting for you to watch? | ||
|
unidentified
|
The reaction to the Biden pardons, House Speaker Mike Johnson told reporters yesterday that he found that shocking and unbelievable. | |
| And he said lawmakers were going to be investigating it, see if there's anything they can do. | ||
| That's a tough nut to crack because pardons for the president are written into the Constitution. | ||
| So I'm not a lawyer, but it seems like you'd have to have an amendment to the Constitution to change that authority. | ||
| And that might be a tough hill to climb. | ||
| You mentioned Speaker Mike Johnson, shocking, unconstitutional about the Biden pardons. | ||
| This is less than a minute. | ||
| He was asked yesterday about his reaction to the Trump J6 pardons. | ||
| So look, everybody can describe this however they want. | ||
| The president has the pardon and commutation authority. | ||
|
unidentified
|
It's his decision. | |
| And I think what was made clear all along is that peaceful protests and people who engage in that should never be punished. | ||
| There was a weaponization of the Justice Department. | ||
| There was a weaponization of the events following the prosecutions that happened after January 6th. | ||
|
unidentified
|
It was a terrible time and a terrible chapter in America's history. | |
| The president's made his decision. | ||
| I don't second guess those. | ||
| And yes, it's kind of my ethos, my worldview. | ||
| We believe in redemption. | ||
| We believe in second chances. | ||
| You would argue that those people didn't pay a heavy penalty having been incarcerated and all of that. | ||
| That's up to you. | ||
| But the president's made a decision. | ||
| We move forward. | ||
|
unidentified
|
There are better days ahead of us. | |
| That's what we're excited about. | ||
| We're not looking backwards. | ||
| You're looking forward. | ||
| Bart Jansen, the president's made his decision. | ||
| I don't second guess those about the Trump pardons. | ||
| Very different reaction than his reaction to the Biden pardons. | ||
|
unidentified
|
That's right. | |
| Talking about redemption and saying that it sounds like a good decision because particularly he was mentioning peaceful protesters. | ||
| That's something Republicans have mentioned repeatedly that a lot of the folks they've been compared to walking through the Capitol as if they were tourists. | ||
| But hundreds of people were charged with violent offense, convicted of violent offenses on that day. | ||
| They were wielding baseball bats, flagpoles, beating police, spraying them with chemicals. | ||
| And so several of the police who were injured that day, forced to retire from their injuries, have been voiced great upset at the pardons. | ||
| And one in particular, Michael Fanon, suffered a heart attack, concussion, was tased repeatedly. | ||
| He says he feels betrayed by the country. | ||
| Phone lines for this segment with Bart Jansen, USA Today Justice Department reporter. | ||
| As usual, Democrats, Republicans, and Independents, we'll throw him on the screen for you. | ||
| He's with us for the next 15 or 20 minutes. | ||
| So get your calls in. | ||
| Bobby Oklahoma, Democrat, good morning. | ||
| You're up first. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Yes. | |
| If it would have been me and I would have been them cops up there when they come up there to try to take me out like they done them on after Trump sent them up there, they would have looked like hood ornaments hanging off them down the side of them damn walls. | ||
| Bobby, what's the question, Bobby? | ||
|
unidentified
|
The question is: why is people so dumb to vote for a man like Donald Trump and turn around and let him fooled people on he was going to get the price of milk down, the price of eggs down? | |
| He ain't going to get the price of nothing down because he's a liar. | ||
| It's Bobby in Oklahoma. | ||
| He said a minute ago Donald Trump doing exactly what he said he was going to do when he came to January 6th pardons. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Yeah, he'd been talking about pardoning at least some of what he calls hostages for years. | |
| He said at various times that they would at least be the nonviolent or the people who had not assaulted police. | ||
| As it turned out, it wound up being all of them. | ||
| But he spoke repeatedly about issuing pardons on Monday in his return to the Oval Office. | ||
| He said these hostages were treated outrageously and that their lives had been destroyed. | ||
| So I don't think he's made any secret that he thought they were treated badly. | ||
| Virgil Richmond, Kentucky, Republican, go ahead. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Yes, I have a question regarding just how fair the media at large is, whether we're talking about a newsprint media or TV media, about the pardons between Trump and Biden. | |
| Biden, in his four years, had issued over 8,000 pardons, including the pardon of someone that murdered two FBI agents. | ||
| But yet Trump is being attacked for his pardon of a little over 1,500 J6 people who didn't actually kill anyone, even though the Democrats to this day are still portraying the lie that officers were killed on January 6th. | ||
| There is just this great big disconnect between the reality of the pardons Trump has issued and the pardons that President Biden has issued. | ||
| Yeah, in terms of the police deaths that have been linked to the January 6th riot, one of the officers, Brian Sicknick, died the next day. | ||
| He had been sprayed with chemical spray, and his death was ruled natural causes. | ||
| But his mother and others feel like he died because of his treatment on January 6th. | ||
| In addition, a handful of officers who were defending the Capitol on that day wound up dying by suicide in the days and weeks afterwards. | ||
| So sometimes you'll hear sympathetic lawmakers saying that they died as a result of the attack. | ||
| But no, the rioters on that day did not shoot or kill police officers at the Capitol building. | ||
| Arista Toulouse, San Diego, Independent, good morning. | ||
| You're next. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Ayr Sharos, go ahead. | |
| Oh, yes. | ||
| I was wondering why he would pardon some people, you know, when they're actually extremists. | ||
| You know, I was shot in the head in 1991 by a drug dealer, you know, so I can sympathize with his feelings for these people, you know, being scared or something. | ||
| But if they pardon them, I was wondering why would he pardon someone that's an extremist? | ||
| And, you know, and that's the way I feel about that. | ||
| Bart Jansen, Oath Keepers, Proud Boys leaders, commutations for them coming. | ||
| Explain who those folks are. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Yeah, there were two far-right militia groups that were considered to be organizers or instigators of the riot on that day. | |
| A total of 18 people were convicted of seditious conspiracy, basically the accusation they were trying to overthrow the government on that day. | ||
| Oath Keepers is a group of former military officials or law enforcement officers. | ||
| They were ones wearing camouflage outfits and helmets and riot gear and entering the Capitol in what they called a stack formation and sort of a military deployment. | ||
| The Proud Boys was the other group, a group they call themselves Western chauvinists, basically supporting America. | ||
| And so in both cases, the leaders of both groups were given the harshest sentences handed down. | ||
| Stuart Rhodes of the Oath Keepers got an 18-year sentence, and Enrique Terrio, the leader of the Proud Boys at the time, got a 22-year sentence. | ||
| Terrio was pardoned. | ||
| Rhodes was given a commutation, so he actually left federal prison out in Cumberland, Maryland, just after midnight on Tuesday morning. | ||
| So the harshest crimes have also been forgiven by Trump. | ||
| Alexander, Brooklyn, Democrat, good morning. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Yes, good morning. | |
| Thank you for taking my call. | ||
| Just give me a moment before I ask my question. | ||
| But I just honestly feel that this election just completely demonstrated the collapse of both parties, Republican and Democratic parties, for people to actually vote for a person so flawed as Trump and his cabinet, you know, like Kash Patel, Tulsi Gabbard, Hegseth. | ||
| I mean, we can go on. | ||
| But as far as these pardons, what concerns me the most is that basically Trump now has a paramilitary. | ||
| He has several extremist groups that now have been given green light to be able to put a great deal of violent pressure on anybody that they want. | ||
| And now they know that Trump will pardon them if he has to. | ||
| And so my question is, how is whatever you want to call this? | ||
| People will say it's a republic because they want to turn this into a further autocratic system or democracy. | ||
| How is this system literally supposed to survive when the actual people or half of the people in this country want this violence? | ||
| They want this transactional type of a government. | ||
| And there is really no more law and order because you can bend the will, the rule, any way you want to get what you want. | ||
| And Democrats are not going to be able to stop this. | ||
| They just really won't. | ||
| So what is your sense of where we are historically towards a system that just seems to be collapsing because the laws are bent any way that you want in order to get your end results? | ||
| Well, it's a little hard to talk about the end of democracy in a brief television appearance like this. | ||
| What I would say is that Trump would say he won with a strong majority in the Electoral College with an actual majority of the popular vote, which Republicans had been hard-pressed to find in the last couple of decades. | ||
| And in addition, they won the House and Senate. | ||
| So as you say, the entire government now is in the hands of Republicans. | ||
| So I guess I would say he says that he has a strong mandate to carry out his priorities, including handing out these pardons. | ||
| He said he was going to do it on the first day. | ||
| He did it on the first day. | ||
| He says he wants to increase drilling along the coastlines. | ||
| And presumably he will pursue that. | ||
| So what you're going to see over at least the next two years is Trump and his Republican allies in Congress pressing their agenda. | ||
| And the difference would be if enough people get upset or disappointed with his priorities, then perhaps we will start to see some changes in 2026. | ||
| But for now, you've got two years waiting to see what the Republicans will accomplish when they control both branches of government. | ||
| You mentioned Donald Trump's priorities. | ||
| This is one of the headlines from today's papers. | ||
| This is the Washington Post. | ||
| Justice Department is given the job for much of Donald Trump's to-do list. | ||
| Can you just explain what's happening at the Justice Department right now? | ||
| What happens at the beginning of a new administration? | ||
| We hear terms like beachhead teams. | ||
| Pam Bondi hasn't been confirmed yet, but Donald Trump's Donald Trump staffers are in charge of the Justice Department. | ||
| So what's happening this week? | ||
|
unidentified
|
Yeah, during the transition between the election and the inauguration on January 20th, the incoming administration sends in its own staffers to evaluate priorities and staffing in all of the federal agencies. | |
| And so the Justice Department is a high-profile agency. | ||
| Trump has named top leaders for that department in the months. | ||
| He named them very early. | ||
| And so Pam Bondi has had her confirmation hearing. | ||
| She is a former Attorney General of Florida, an 18-year prosecutor. | ||
| So it's not so much that her credentials would have been challenged, but that just her priorities and her allegiance to Trump, which is the political questions, as we wait to see how the Senate Judiciary Committee will be voting on Wednesday on her nomination, and then we'll see about the full Senate. | ||
| But so in addition, he has nominated other top leaders in these political posts that govern the priorities or the policy direction of the department. | ||
| Among those, the Deputy Attorney General would be Todd Blanche, has been appointed. | ||
| And we knew him from the Donald Trump trial in New York. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Correct. | |
| Blanche and his partner Emile Bove were his criminal lawyers and represented him in several of the cases. | ||
| And so Blanche would be Deputy Attorney General. | ||
| Bove would be principal deputy attorney general. | ||
| And so those folks are, Bove is now acting as Deputy Attorney General. | ||
| And so he, for instance, sent out a memo on the 21st saying they want to enforce immigration laws. | ||
| Immigration was one of Trump's top priorities during the campaign. | ||
| He has said he wants to conduct mass deportations. | ||
| He wants to strengthen the border. | ||
| Many of those functions pass through the Justice Department because they technically oversee the immigration courts and they would be pursuing any of the legal remedies as they pursue these deportations. | ||
| So Bove put out a memo saying, you know, keep track of who is cooperating with the federal government, the Department of Homeland Security's agencies, which would actually be rounding up people, the immigration and customs enforcement, customs and border protection, the border patrol. | ||
| And some states and cities have what they call sanctuary laws where they say they would not cooperate with this federal law enforcement to detain or deport migrants. | ||
| Bove's memo said, well, keep track of that going on, and if we need to, we may investigate folks who are not cooperating at the state and local level with this federal law enforcement. | ||
| Just a few minutes left with Bart Jansen, covers the Justice Department for USA today and taking your phone calls. | ||
| This is Barbara. | ||
| She's been waiting in Knoxville, Tennessee. | ||
| Independent, good morning. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Good morning. | |
| I hope you all are doing well today. | ||
| My question is, during the press announcement yesterday, Mike Johnson was very upset because Biden pardoned his family, even though everybody knew that they were going to go after Biden's family. | ||
| Okay. | ||
| Well, they said they were going to look into it and do something about that. | ||
| How can they do that when it's supposed to be absolute? | ||
| You're absolutely right that the pardon authority is absolute. | ||
| There are no apparent restrictions on it in the Constitution. | ||
| What some lawmakers have talked about in the past, and this is one of the big advocates in the last week is a Democrat who would not be aligned with Mike Johnson on many issues. | ||
| But Steve Cohen of Tennessee has talked since at least 2017 at the federal level and previously at the local level in Tennessee about adjusting the pardon authority so that a president could not pardon relatives or top aides or people with potential financial relations. | ||
| Would that take a constitutional amendment? | ||
|
unidentified
|
Well, again, I'm not a lawyer, but it seems like if you're tinkering with the Constitution that you could pass legislation, but then the first challenge to it would try to wipe it out as being unconstitutional. | |
| So the law, the legislation also hasn't moved out of committee during the years that he has introduced it, but he says he's going to pursue it again this year. | ||
| We don't know what Speaker Johnson was talking about in taking a look at it, but it's possible Republicans may also be looking for ways to adjust that authority. | ||
| But it would be interesting to see how the Supreme Court may respond to any eventual challenge because in the immunity decision that it reached in July involving the Trump criminal charges, | ||
| they said several of the things that you just absolutely can't criminally charge a former president with are the core powers of the presidency, and that's pardons, vetoes, and the appointment power. | ||
| So it's something that's only held by the executive and other branches are usually reluctant to step in and try to tinker with the powers of the other branches. | ||
| 90 seconds left this morning. | ||
| What else are you watching for in a really busy week on your beat that we haven't talked about yet? | ||
|
unidentified
|
Well, I'm focusing a lot on immigration and waiting to see how these enforcement actions will play out. | |
| They've already talked about rounding up hundreds of undocumented immigrants. | ||
| And there are an estimated 11 or 12 million undocumented immigrants in the country. | ||
| Half of those are people who overstayed their visas. | ||
| There's also the border security. | ||
| Basically, I'm watching to see how do they pursue these folks, how do they round them up? | ||
| The volume could be huge. | ||
| They've begun deploying active military to the border. | ||
| 1,500 troops are being sent. | ||
| That is not entirely new. | ||
| Active duty troops have been sent to support customs and border protection for a couple of decades now. | ||
| So we're waiting to see how Trump's actions will be new and what he says will be more aggressive to secure the border. | ||
| Bart Jansen, Justice Department correspondent with USA Today, USAToday.com is where you can go to see his work, and we do always appreciate your time. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Thanks very much for having me. | |
| C-SPAN's Washington Journal, a live forum involving you to discuss the latest issues in government, politics, and public policy. | ||
| From Washington, D.C. to across the country. | ||
| Coming up Friday morning. | ||
| Arkansas Republican Congressman Bruce Westerman, chair of the Natural Resources Committee, talks about the Trump administration's energy, environment, and climate policies and other congressional news of the day. | ||
| And Max Steyer from the Partnership for Public Service will talk about President Trump's executive actions aimed at overhauling the federal workforce. | ||
| And then Dean Ball, a research fellow at George Mason University's Mercatus Center, will talk about President Trump's artificial intelligence infrastructure investment. | ||
| C-SPAN's Washington Journal. | ||
| Join the conversation live at 7 Eastern on Friday morning on C-SPAN, C-SPAN Now, or online at c-SPAN.org. | ||
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| Beginning at noon Eastern, pro-life activists and lawmakers will gather on the National Mall for the nation's largest anti-abortion rally, the March for Life. | ||
| Vice President Vance, Florida Governor Ron DeSantis, and professional surfer Bethany Hamilton are among those scheduled to speak. | ||
| On C-SPAN 2 at 10 a.m. Eastern, Senate lawmakers will continue debating the confirmation of President Trump's nominee for Defense Secretary, Pete Hegseth. | ||
| A vote on his confirmation is expected right after the debate. | ||
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| This weekend at 6.45 p.m. Eastern, we'll visit George Washington's Virginia home, Mount Vernon, to tour recent renovation and preservation efforts at the historic property. |