Marco Rubio steers clear of commenting on Jan. 6 pardons

The new Secretary of State won’t weigh in on President Donald Trump’s decision to pardon people involved in the Jan. 6, 2021 protests at the United States Capitol.

“I’m not going to engage in domestic political debates. I can’t at the — in the role at State Department, my job is to focus on the President’s foreign policy,” Marco Rubio told Craig Melvin of NBC News.

Trump’s pardons of those involved in protesting the certification of the 2020 election are intended to rectify a “grave national injustice that has been perpetrated upon the American people over the last four years and begin a process of national reconciliation,” per the President.

He also directed the Attorney General’s Office to ensure “all individuals convicted of offenses related to events that occurred at or near the United States Capitol on January 6, 2021, who are currently held in prison are released immediately.”

Rubio noted, in his comments to Melvin, that his days “of engaging in domestic politics will be put aside” in order to “focus on the affairs that the United States has around the world and the engagements we have to have to make our country a safer, stronger, more prosperous place.”

In the immediate wake of the attacks, Rubio said Trump bore “some responsibility” for the protests and the aftermath, which led to a brief delay in the certification of Joe Biden’s win.

Rubio told host Maria Bartiromo that Trump “indulged groups” that were not, as it turns out “part of the conservative movement,” but instead, apparently, were “wackos” and “nut jobs.”

“I can’t give you an assessment of every single person that went in there. But it’s clear now by the arrests that are being made what groups are saying online: that QAnon people are involved, this ridiculous conspiracy. Then you’ve got White supremacists in there. You’ve got the Proud Boys. It’s a rogue’s gallery of groups who thought they were going to storm the Capitol,” Rubio said.

“They thought they were going to apprehend the Vice President and Congress and have them pay the ultimate price, as they called it. ‘String them up,’ they would say. I’ve had protests here in Florida calling for me to be strung up and others.”

“We have for too long indulged some of these groups as part of the conservative movement. These are not conservatives. These are wackos. These are nut jobs,” Rubio added at the time, advising conservatives to “watch what we say and who we allow into the movement.”