Sen. Joni Ernst (R-IA) said she would not advise former President Donald Trump not to pardon Jan. 6 rioters if he is re-elected in 2024.
In a Sunday interview on Meet the Press, host Kristen Welker asked Ernst about the possibility of pardons for crimes committed on Jan. 6.
"I am not opposed to that," Ernst replied. "That is a president's prerogative. And so if former President Donald Trump is elected as our next president, he does have the right to do that."
Ernst changed her answer when pressed.
"You would support pardoning them?" Welker asked again.
"Well, again, I am not saying that I would support pardoning them, but that is a president's prerogative to do so," the senator said.
"These are people, though, who attacked the building that you were in," Welker noted. "You called them insurrectionists at the time."
Ernst, however, insisted she had never used the word insurrectionists.
"I did not call them insurrectionists," she insisted. "I don't remember using that term."
But Welker pointed out that Ernst had called the Jan. 6 attacks an insurrection in a 2021 column for the Des Moines Register.
"But storming the U.S. Capitol in an attempt to influence elected officials — an insurrection as many have called it — is not, and will never be, a peaceful protest," Ernst wrote at the time. "It is anarchy — and America and her people cannot stand for it in any form."
