As Donald Trump’s second inauguration nears, many defendants from Jan. 6, 2021, are hoping he keeps his word and issues pardons.
Few people know more about Jan. 6 cases and the evidence against defendants than Matt Graves, D.C.’s outgoing U.S. attorney. Graves led the prosecution effort. He resigns his post Thursday.
The News4 I-Team sat down with Graves and discussed Jan. 6 pardons, D.C. crime and calls for political prosecutions. He described his more than three years on the job as the “honor of a lifetime.”
Graves said he’s proud of his accomplishments. Violent crime in D.C. dropped 35% last year and could be down more this year.
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“We are seeing substantial reductions in our total violent crime numbers,” he said.
But he knows there’s more to talk about at the D.C. U.S. attorney’s office as he prepares to leave.
On Graves’ watch, the office oversaw charges against nearly 1,600 people accused of crimes from the Jan. 6 insurrection. He was quick to note the office declined to charge 400 others who were on Capitol grounds that day but didn’t enter the building.
Trump has promised pardons on his first day in office to those he has called “hostages.”
Graves, not surprisingly, doesn’t agree.
“I do not believe that anyone deserves a pardon,” he told the I-Team.
Over the weekend, on “Fox News Sunday,” Vice President-elect JD Vance suggested Trump-era J6 pardons would be evaluated depending on the crime.
“If you protested peacefully on January 6th and you’ve had Merrick Garland's Justice Department treat you like a gang member, you should be pardoned. If you committed violence on that day, obviously you shouldn't be pardoned,” he said.
Graves said it shouldn't matter.
“The reason it worked was because so many people were involved, many of them using violence and many of them riding the coattails of those using violence, such that they were able to get into the Capitol,” he said, adding, “When we're talking with individuals who are not personally charged with nonviolent crimes, they were part of a mob that overtook a federal building, a federal building that happened to be the Capitol building, and many did so with the intent of stopping business that was occurring that day. Now, my personal view is whenever someone tries to take over a federal building, they should be held criminally accountable for that. But particularly so when you're talking about the seminal federal building, the Capitol, and they were motivated to do so because they wanted to stop the functioning of government.”
Even as Graves spoke, trials against J6 defendants were moving ahead.
“We are going to continue to charge cases that we believe should be charged,” he said.
Out of respect for the next administration, Graves wouldn’t say if the Trump transition team has talked to his office about J6 cases.
What Matt Graves said about political prosecutions
He cautioned the next U.S. attorney for D.C. to avoid calls for political prosecutions.
“If everyone understands that the new way of doing business is we're just going to make up a bunch of things because we don't like the current administration and we are going to look to go after career people who are trying to do the right thing and make up things about them, it is going to make it harder to attract qualified people to these jobs,” he said. “And that's a really bad place for us to be as a country.”
Graves said he’s not worried about being a target for leading the J6 prosecutions and didn’t even consider asking President Joe Biden for a pre-emptive pardon.
“I've just never entertained that idea. There's nothing to be pardoned for,” Graves said.
During the campaign, Trump made various statements about possibly targeting people who had upset him, including potentially using the Department of Justice to prosecute people he thought were corrupt. The D.C. U.S. attorney's office could be saddled with any of those potential prosecutions.
Graves said he’s confident about a smooth transition and that his view is there will be so much for the next U.S. attorney to focus on, prosecuting politicians may not rise to the top of the list. Asked if that was wishful thinking, Graves only said it's his view of what will happen.