Former President Donald Trump speaks at a Save America Rally, held outdoors at the Montgomery County Fairgrounds in Conroe, Texas, on Saturday. Trump said during the rally that if he is re-elected president in 2024, he would pardon defendants who had been arrested for participating in the riot at the U.S. Capitol. Photo by Michael Wyke/EPA-EFE
Jan. 30 (UPI) -- Former President Donald Trump said during a rally in Texas that if he is re-elected president in 2024, he would pardon defendants who had been arrested for participating in the riot at the U.S. Capitol on Jan. 6, 2021.
Trump, who teased his potential presidential run during a Save America rally Saturday in Conroe, which is north of Houston, said that the alleged rioters were treated "so unfairly." Trump's supporters had stormed the Capitol after his speech last year in a bid to stop the official count of Electoral College votes after he lost the 2020 presidential election to Joe Biden.
"If I run and if I win, we will treat those people from January 6 fairly. We will treat them fairly," Trump said. "And if it requires pardons, we will give them pardons. Because they are being treated so unfairly."
The former president and his supporters have repeatedly made false statements that the 2020 presidential election was rigged, and that Biden won as the result of voter fraud, sentiments which Trump repeated during the Conroe rally.
"Texas is never, ever turning blue. That is, unless they rig like the election like they've been doing in numerous other states," Trump said. "Just be careful with these people, they're treacherous."
The Justice Department has arrested more than 725 people in connection with the riot at the Capitol from nearly all 50 states. More than 225 people have been charged with assaulting, resisting, or impeding Capitol police and other law enforcement during the attack on the Capitol -- and at least 20 have pleaded guilty to felony charges.
During the speech, Trump also hit out at the "outrageous civil and criminal harassment" of him in New York by Attorney General Letitia James and the Manhattan district attorney's office, which have been investigating the Trump Organization for fraud.
Trump urged his supporters to stage "the biggest protests we ever had" in Washington D.C, New York and Atlanta against prosecutors for investigating him and his business.
"These prosecutors are vicious, horrible people. They're racists and they're very sick -- they're mentally sick," he said. "They're going after me without any protection of my rights by the Supreme Court or most other courts. In reality, they're not after me, they're after you."
Trump also criticized ongoing COVID-19 restrictions in the United States, and referenced news of a massive protest of truckers in the Canadian capital Ottawa held on Saturday.
"The Canadian truckers, you've been reading about it, who are resisting bravely these lawless mandates are doing more to defend American freedom than our leaders," Trump said. "We want those great Canadian truckers to know we are with them all the way."
