Trump says members of Jan. 6 committee should be jailed

The president-elect said he would not instruct his pick for attorney general to investigate Jack Smith, the special counsel appointed to investigate him.

On Dec. 8, President-elect Donald Trump gave his first sit-down interview since the election to NBC News, which covered a wide range of topics. (Video: The Washington Post)

President-elect Donald Trump, in his first post-election TV interview, promised a confrontational return to the White House, saying he would like to see many of those who investigated him jailed, including lawmakers who led an inquiry into his role in the Jan. 6, 2021, attack on the Capitol.

In a wide-ranging interview that also covered his tariff plans and support for his Cabinet picks, the president-elect promoted an aggressive immigration agenda, doubling down on his promise to deport all undocumented immigrants, including their family members who are in the country legally.

While it is exceedingly abnormal for the leader of a democracy to express a desire to see political opponents jailed, Trump has long called for the prosecution and imprisonment of those he believes unfairly launched investigations into actions he took during his first administration.

In a 45-minute interview with NBC News’s “Meet the Press” that aired Sunday and was recorded on Friday, Trump said members of the now-defunct House select committee tasked with investigating the deadly Jan. 6, 2021, insurrection at the Capitol should be in jail.

“Everybody on that committee … for what they did, yeah, honestly, they should go to jail,” Trump said, including former congresswoman Liz Cheney (R-Wyoming), the top Republican on the Jan. 6 panel.

The committee, which shuttered when Republicans took back the House in January 2023, consisted of seven Democrats and two Republicans: Cheney and Adam Kinzinger (Illinois). The panel was chaired by Rep. Bennie G. Thompson (D-Mississippi).

The committee concluded that Trump actively inspired his supporters to commit violence in his name as he attempted to remain in office despite losing the 2020 election. News outlets, including The Washington Post, have said that Biden is considering preemptive pardons for individuals he and his team believe might face legal threats from the incoming Trump administration.

Trump’s comments on “Meet the Press” mark an escalation of his threats to members of the committee. While he posted in March 2023 that the committee members “should be prosecuted for their lies,” accusing them of “treason,” he has largely refrained from calling for their imprisonment.

He has only repeatedly expressed interest in jailing Cheney — a longtime Republican who lost her seat in Congress after refusing to excuse Trump’s efforts to overturn the results of the 2020 election. Cheney endorsed and campaigned with Vice President Kamala Harris this election cycle, further infuriating Trump.

“Of course this poses a very serious threat to democracy; Kings and despots jail their political opponents,” said Victoria Nourse, leader of the Center on Congress and Democracy at Georgetown Law. “The former president is playing with fire here. Putting fellow Republicans in jail will only embolden the faction in his party that is deeply never-Trump.”

In a statement to The Post, Cheney said Trump “again lied about the January 6th Select Committee.”

“Here is the truth: Donald Trump attempted to overturn the 2020 presidential election and seize power. He mobilized an angry mob and sent them to the United States Capitol, where they attacked police officers, invaded the building, and halted the official counting of electoral votes,” Cheney said. “Donald Trump’s suggestion that members of Congress who later investigated his illegal and unconstitutional actions should be jailed is a continuation of his assault on the rule of law and the foundations of our republic.”

Cheney also sought to clarify Trump’s baseless claims during the NBC News interview that the select committee destroyed evidence, citing a 2023 letter Thompson sent House Oversight subcommittee chairman Barry Loudermilk noting that select committee staff carefully archived all evidence.

“There is no conceivably appropriate factual or constitutional basis for what Donald Trump is suggesting — a Justice Department investigation of the work of a congressional committee — and any lawyer who attempts to pursue that course would quickly find themselves engaged in sanctionable conduct,” she said.

Representatives for Kinzinger and Thompson did not immediately respond to requests for comment.

Follow live updates on the transition to Trump’s second presidency. We’re tracking the people Trump has picked or is considering to fill his Cabinet and key positions in his administration.

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Trump also expressed disdain for Jack Smith, the Justice Department special counsel tasked with investigating allegations that he mishandled classified materials and also any role he had in efforts to overturn the results of Joe Biden’s 2020 election victory.

Trump also said he would let Pam Bondi, his pick for attorney general, “do what she wants to do” regarding an investigation into Smith. Trump has previously said he would like to fire Smith’s entire team, including career attorneys typically protected from political retribution, according to two individuals close to Trump’s transition.

When Kristen Welker, host of NBC’s “Meet the Press,” asked if Trump wanted to see Smith in prison, he called Smith “very corrupt” but said the decision would be left to Bondi.

“I’m not going to instruct her to do it,” he said.

Trump claimed he would not appoint a special prosecutor to investigate Biden — something he promised to do last year — unless Bondi and Kash Patel, his choice to lead the FBI, think there’s a reason to go after the Democratic president.

“I’m not doing that unless I find something that I think is reasonable,” Trump said. “But that’s not going to be my decision, that’s going to be Pam Bondi’s decision and, to a different extent, Kash Patel’s.”

Before he can nominate Patel to lead the FBI, Trump would first need to fire its current director, Christopher A. Wray, or Wray would have to resign several years before the end of a 10-year term.

When Welker asked Trump if he wants to fire Wray — a move that many experts have warned would hurt the FBI’s independence — Trump said it “would sort of seem pretty obvious that if Kash gets in, he’s going to be taking somebody’s place right now. Somebody is the man that you’re talking about.”

The president-elect also reiterated his intention to pardon the rioters who broke into the Capitol on Jan. 6, 2021.

“They’ve been in there for years, and they’re in a filthy, disgusting place that shouldn’t even be allowed to be open,” Trump said.

As The Post has reported, judges appointed by both parties who are handling cases of Jan. 6 defendants have said that the executive branch plans are “irrelevant” to the judiciary’s duties, showing no signs of being deterred by the prospect of pardons.

“No matter what ultimately becomes of the Capitol riots cases already concluded and still pending, the true story of what happened on January 6, 2021 will never change,” U.S. District Judge Royce C. Lamberth, a Ronald Reagan appointee, said Friday.

During the NBC interview, Welker asked Trump if he’s willing to finally concede the 2020 election “for the sake of unifying this country.”

“No, why would I do that?” Trump replied.

He then blamed Biden for any divisions in the country, baselessly accusing him of “weaponizing” the Justice Department after the department launched investigations into his efforts to reverse the results of the 2020 election as well as his alleged mishandling of classified documents after he left the White House.

Biden “went after his political opponent violently because he knew he couldn’t beat him,” Trump said. “And I think it really was a bad thing.”

While Trump told Welker that he does not believe warnings from economists that imposing tariffs on Mexico, Canada and China will raise prices for U.S. consumers, he insisted the levies would benefit Americans but added that he “can’t guarantee” that prices won’t go up.

Trump then claimed that the United States is “subsidizing” Canada, Mexico and other countries. He said that, if “we’re going to subsidize them, let them become a state.”

When Welker noted that tariffs imposed during his first term cost Americans billions, the president-elect again claimed that the tariffs “cost Americans nothing.”

Companies across the United States that rely on foreign suppliers have started preparing to raise prices, The Post reported in October, saying they will pass along the cost of the tariffs to their American customers. Economists have also told The Post that tariffs would probably be a swift run-up in prices on necessities like meat, fruits and vegetables, along with cars, clothing and crude oil — all of which play an outsize role in family budgets.

Trump threatened Mexico and Canada with tariffs as part of his hard-line immigration stance, portraying both countries as failing to secure their borders with the United States and allowing criminals and fentanyl to cross into the country.

In the “Meet the Press” interview, Trump repeated his plan to deport everyone who is in the country illegally, but offered no specific details on how he envisions an operation of that magnitude to be conducted.

Trump said he wants Dreamers — individuals protected under the Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals policy — to stay in the country. But he also said he would not hesitate to deport mixed-status families — families with members who have legal status and members who don’t.

“I don’t want to be breaking up families, so the only way you don’t break up the family is you keep them together, and you have to send them all back,” he said.

Trump also repeated his promise to end birthright citizenship on day one of his administration, even though it is a constitutional right granted by the 14th Amendment.

“We’re going to have to get it changed,” Trump said. “We’ll maybe have to go back to the people. But we have to end it.”

The president-elect repeatedly said, falsely, that the United States is “the only country in the world” with birthright citizenship, as most countries in the Americas have that right.

Additionally, any change to the Constitution would first need to be proposed by two-thirds vote of both houses of Congress or two-thirds of states via special conventions, and it would then require ratification by three-quarters of state legislatures, or three-fourths of conventions called in each state.

Trump defended his selection of Robert F. Kennedy Jr., who founded a prominent anti-vaccine group, to serve as the nation’s top health official. The choice has unnerved public health officials and Democrats who say that Kennedy should be nowhere near the nation’s public health infrastructure. Some Republicans also say that Kennedy must explain his views on vaccines, abortion and other issues to get their votes. Kennedy has said he is not anti-vaccine.

While Trump and Kennedy have both said that Kennedy could play a sweeping role in remaking the nation’s heath system, the president-elect walked back his proclamation in the NBC interview. “He’s not looking to, you know, to reinvent the wheel totally,” Trump said.

He added that he recently convened a conversation between Kennedy, pharmaceutical executives and Mehmet Oz, Trump’s pick to oversee the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services. “I said, let’s all get together and let’s figure out where we’re going,” Trump said, adding that the conversation focused on vaccines, drug pricing and pesticides, among other topics.