'I just can't agree': Trump's Jan. 6 pardons face pushback from Republican senators

WASHINGTON — A handful of Republican senators pushed back Tuesday against President Donald Trump’s decision to issue pardons to roughly 1,500 criminal defendants and commute the sentences of more than a dozen others in connection to the Jan. 6, 2021, attack on the U.S. Capitol.

Some of the GOP senators specifically criticized the pardons for those convicted of committing violence against police officers, while others declined to defend Trump's move.

“I’m disappointed to see that,” said Sen. Lisa Murkowski, R-Alaska, adding that she is thinking about the hundreds of police officers who defended the Capitol that day. “And I do fear the message that is sent to these great men and women that stood by us.”

“I think that whether you’re in Baton Rouge, New Orleans, Shreveport, Monroe, Lafayette, Alexandria, Lake Charles or Washington, D.C., it’s wrong to assault anybody — but certainly to assault an officer,” added Sen. Bill Cassidy, R-La. “I’m a big back-the-blue guy.”

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Sen. Thom Tillis, R-N.C., said he was still going through the details of the pardons and commutations, but said it was “surprising to me that it was a blanket pardon.”

“I just can’t agree,” Tillis said of Trump’s actions. “I’m about to file two bills that will increase the penalties up to and including the death penalty for the murder of a police officer and increasing the penalties and creating federal crimes for assaulting a police officer — that should give you everything you need to know about my position.”

And Sen. Shelley Moore Capito, R-W.Va., said she sympathized with the family of Capitol Police Officer Brian Sicknick, who was assaulted during the attack and died a day later. The Sicknick family described the pardons in a statement Tuesday as "the undoing of the justice that was previously determined by the Court’s sentencing of Brian’s assailants."

“I understand why they feel that way,” Capito said. “I think that for me personally, I have great appreciation for the Capitol Police, and I hope they know it and appreciate it.”

It was a familiar position for Republican lawmakers who served during Trump's first term in the White House. A day after Trump took the oath of office for a second time, reporters peppered GOP senators in the Capitol with a slew of questions on topics ranging from the Jan. 6 pardons and Trump’s first batch of executive orders to concerns about Trump’s presidential nominees.

On Monday night, hours after he took the oath in the Capitol Rotunda — the site of one of the clashes on Jan. 6 — Trump commuted the sentences of individuals associated with the Proud Boys and Oath Keepers, who were convicted of seditious conspiracy. He also issued “a full, complete and unconditional pardon to all other individuals convicted of offenses related to events that occurred at or near the United States Capitol on January 6, 2021,” which included people who assaulted law enforcement officers.

The police union said that more than 140 Capitol Police and D.C. Metropolitan Police officers were assaulted and injured in the Jan. 6 attack, when thousands of Trump supporters stormed and breached the Capitol in an effort to halt Congress’ certification of Joe Biden’s 2020 victory over Trump.

Sen. Susan Collins, a moderate Republican from Maine, said she draws a distinction between those who “got caught up in the crowd that day” and those who “assaulted police officers with their fists, with flag poles, with pepper spray and destroyed property.”

“I do not believe those individuals warrant clemency,” she said, adding that she also opposed Biden's move to pre-emptively pardon members of his family before leaving the White House. “This week has been a terrible week for our justice system.”

Tillis and others also echoed Collins’ concerns about the Biden pardons.

“I hope anybody who’s going to be critical of what occurred last night is also very critical of a massive overreach by President Biden’s prospective pardons,” Tillis said.

There was another group of Republicans senators who would not directly criticize Trump over the Jan. 6-related pardons, but also would not publicly support the move.

“The president made that decision. You’ll have to ask him. I will not defend it,” said Sen. Mike Rounds, R-S.D.

Sen. Josh Hawley, R-Mo., who pumped his fist at Trump supporters before they stormed the Capitol four years ago, said if he were president he would not have offered pardons to individuals who committed violence on Jan. 6. But he added that Trump campaigned on pardoning these individuals and then followed through.

“He keeps his campaign promises,” Hawley told reporters.

Other Republicans brushed aside questions about the pardons. Senate Majority Leader John Thune, R-S.D., told NBC News he’s “looking forward to the next four years, not the last four” when pressed on Trump’s decision.

“Would you guys ask the same questions of Biden?” Thune said when asked what message this sends to officers who were attacked that day.

And Sen. James Lankford, R-Okla., declined to comment on the pardons, saying that Trump was issuing dozens of important executive orders and that he’s only being asked about the pardons.

“Everybody’s asking me about J6,” said Senate Judiciary Chairman Chuck Grassley, R-Iowa. “None of you guys are asking about the Biden pardons.”

Several House Republicans had been personally lobbying Trump to pardon criminal defendants who had been charged in the Jan. 6 attack. Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene, R-Ga., a close Trump ally who has made multiple visits to Jan. 6 rioters in jail, said on the fourth anniversary of the attack that she had made her case directly to Trump to issue blanket pardons.

They are “treated like terrorists in their own country. Yeah, I think they all should be pardoned,” Greene told reporters on Jan. 6 this year. “And I think this country should never allow this type of abuse of our justice system again. It was politically weaponized against people who protested the election of 2020."

In statements and interviews, congressional Democrats slammed Trump’s pardons.

“House Republicans are celebrating pardons issued to a bloodthirsty mob that violently assaulted police officers on January 6, 2021. What happened to backing the Blue?” House Minority Leader Hakeem Jeffries, D-N.Y., said in a statement.

“Far right extremists have become the party of lawlessness and disorder. Don’t ever lecture America again. About anything," he said.

This article was originally published on NBCNews.com