JD Vance fights back against claims that he flip-flopped over blanket pardon stance

“I think it’s very simple,” Vice President JD Vance told Fox’s Shannon Bream on Jan. 12. “If you protested peacefully on January the 6th and you’ve had [Attorney General] Merrick Garland’s Department of Justice treat you like a gang member, you should be pardoned. If you committed violence on that day, obviously you shouldn’t be pardoned.” Just 14 days later, Vance went to bat for President Donald Trump issuing a blanket pardon for those brought up on Jan. 6-related charges. In an interview on CBS’s Face the Nation Sunday, Margaret Brennan confronted Vance about his pre-pardon comments. “Did you counsel the president against these blanket pardons for 1,500 people, including those who committed violence?” Brennan asked. “Margaret, I noticed that you cut off the thing that I said immediately after that,” “Vance replied. “The full quote is that, ‘of course, there are gray areas.’ And here’s the nature of the gray area. Merrick Garland’s Department of Justice denied constitutional protections in the prosecutions. There were double standards in how sentences were applied to the J6 protesters versus other groups. What the president said consistently on the campaign is that he was going to look at it on a case-by-case basis.”