The former vice president said he's "deeply disappointed" by Trump's act while acknowledging that he has "every right" to do it.
Former Vice President Mike Pence on Monday said he was "deeply disappointed" in Donald Trump for pardoning rioters who engaged in violence during the deadly Jan. 6, 2021 attack.
"The president has every right under the Constitution to grant pardons, but in that moment, I thought it sent the wrong message," said Pence in an interview with CNN's Kaitlan Collins.
Pence's comments arrived just one day after he received the John F. Kennedy Profile in Courage Award for his role in refusing to block the certification of electoral votes amid Trump's efforts to overturn the results of the 2020 election.
Pence, who notably didn't endorse Trump in last year's election, has repeatedly defended his actions inside the Capitol that day. Amid the riot, gallows were set up outside and Trump's supporters chanted, "hang Mike Pence."
Pence has previously emphasized that Trump was "wrong" for his role in the riot and his "reckless words" endangered his family as well as other lawmakers in the building. He's also stressed that he didn't think Trump should pardon "anyone" who assaulted a police officer during the attack.
On the first day of his second term, Trump signed an executive order pardoning more than 1,500 rioters convicted for their role in the attack, a blanket move that led to pardons of violent offenders (an act that Vice President JD Vance once claimed would "obviously" be inappropriate).
Over 600 people were charged with impeding or assaulting police amid the attack, per the Justice Department.
Later in his CNN interview, Pence weighed in on Vance previously declaring that he was "extremely skeptical" that the former veep's life was "ever in danger" during the riot.
"I would just say that I'll leave that to the judgment of history," he told Collins.
After Collins asked him directly if he felt like his life was "in danger" on the day of the riot, Pence noted that there wasn't a moment that he felt "physically threatened" that day.
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