Jan. 6 committee member says pardons are unnecessary: ‘We didn’t do anything wrong’

Rep. Pete Aguilar, a top Democrat who served on the congressional committee investigating President-elect Donald Trump’s alleged efforts to overturn the 2020 election, isn’t expecting any favors from the outgoing commander-in-chief. 

He said he thinks a preemptive pardon from President Joe Biden, protecting him from Trump’s potential retaliation, is unnecessary because the Jan. 6 committee ‘didn’t do anything wrong.’ 

‘I don’t think a pardon is necessary. I stand by the work that we did,’ on the committee, Aguilar told reporters at the Capitol Tuesday.

The California Democrat also said that he has ‘not sought a pardon,’ nor has he spoken to anyone at the White House about one. Fox News Digital reached out to Aguilar to inquire whether he would accept one, if it were granted to him, but did not hear back.   

Lawmakers who served on the House committee investigating Jan. 6 have been split about the importance of a preemptive pardon. Some fear it will set a bad precedent for future presidents and assert that the Constitution’s speech and debate clause provides adequate protection against criminal prosecutions, or civil lawsuits, over their legislative work. Others, meanwhile, have welcomed the idea of a pardon, fearing ‘retribution’ from Trump.

Rep. Bennie Thompson, D-Miss., chairman of the former Jan. 6 committee investigating Trump, said he spoke with the White House last month about the potential of issuing pardons for lawmakers who served on the committee, and said he would accept a pardon from Biden if it were granted to him.

‘I believe Donald Trump when he says he’s going to inflict retribution on this,’ Thompson said this week. ‘I believe when he says my name and Liz Cheney and the others. I believe him.’

Other than Thompson, no other members of the committee have indicated they will accept a pardon granted to them by Biden. However, they have stopped short of saying whether they would decline one.

‘I’ve not been in touch with the White House. I’ve not sought one,’ Rep. Zoe Lofgren, D-Calif., who served on the committee, said Tuesday. 

‘It would be the wrong precedent to set. I don’t want to see each president hereafter on their way out the door giving out a broad category of pardons,’ Sen. Adam Schiff, D-Calif, who also served on the committee, said in an interview with CNN earlier this month. Former GOP Illinois Rep. Adam Kinzinger made the same argument as Schiff, but went a step further, saying that he did not want one.

Rep. Jamie Raskin, D-Md., said during a live event this week hosted by Politico that he wasn’t sure what the right call for Biden was. 

‘Different people have different feelings about the whole pardon thing because there are these outrageous threats that are being leveled against people just for doing their jobs, like Jan. 6 prosecutors at the Department of Justice,’ Raskin said. He added that ‘in a just world’ there would be no need for a pardon because the committee did nothing wrong.

‘I’m glad we’ve got a wise president with wise people around him who will be able to figure that out,’ Raskin said.  

During Biden’s final interview as president with a print publication last week, he indicated that preemptive pardons for Trump’s political foes were still under consideration. Biden also noted in the interview that he had personally urged Trump not to ‘try to settle scores’ when he met with the president-elect at the White House following his November election victory.  

Trump has referred to Thompson and other members on the Jan. 6 committee as ‘thugs’ and ‘creeps.’ During an interview on NBC’s ‘Meet The Press’ last month, Trump accused the members on the committee of destroying evidence, adding that ‘everybody on that committee … should go to jail.’

‘They lied. And what did they do? They deleted and destroyed a whole year and a half worth of testimony. Do you know that I can’t get — I think those people committed a major crime,’ Trump told NBC’s Kristen Welker.

On Tuesday, the Justice Department released a 137-page report outlining the details of Special Counsel Jack Smith’s investigation into Trump’s alleged efforts to overturn the 2020 election. Due to Trump’s election victory, prosecutors were forced to drop the case, but the report, according to Smith, shows how Trump allegedly used ‘lies as a weapon to defeat a federal government function foundational to the United States’ democratic process.’

The Jan. 6 committee concluded its work after roughly a year and a half of investigations with a final report that determined Trump played a central role in the events that led to the siege on the U.S. Capitol on Jan. 6, 2021 and that there was enough evidence for federal prosecutors to convict him. The report included several criminal referrals that the committee ultimately passed on to the Department of Justice.