Donald Trump says Joe Biden should have preemptively pardoned himself before he left the White House because “it all had to do with him”.
He made the comments during a pre-recorded sit down interview with Fox News’ Sean Hannity, the first since his inauguration.
Speaking about Mr Biden pardoning a number of his own family members and allies before leaving the White House earlier this week, Mr Trump gave a potentially ominous reply.
“You know, the funny thing — maybe the sad thing — is he didn’t give himself a pardon. And if you look at it, it all had to do with him,” Mr Trump said in a preview of the interview.
“I mean the money went to him.”
Mr Trump also said he had the option of pardoning himself before leaving office in his first term but did not.
“I said, ‘I’m not going to pardon anybody. We didn’t do anything wrong’.”
During the friendly interview with Hannity, who admits Mr Trump is a friend, said of his pardoning of more than 1500 January 6 Capitol rioters that “most of the people were absolutely innocent” .
He also dismissed the rioters’ attacks on police officers trying to defend the Capitol as “very minor incidents”.
“This was a political hoax…there was a lot of patriotism with those people”.
About 140 police officers were injured during the riot. Five officers died.
More than 200 of the rioters were convicted of felony assault on police officers, with an average prison sentence of about four years, according to The Washington Post.
“Nobody’s ever been treated so badly,” Trump said. “They were treated like the worst criminals in history. And you know what they were there for. They were protesting the vote because they knew the election was rigged.”
Mr Trump also expressed outrage that Mr Biden had pardoned some of the people who had worked on the investigation into the Capitol riots.
“What they did was criminal. That’s why they got pardoned,” he said.
No member of the House select committee that investigated the Capitol attack or its staff has been charged with a crime related to their investigation, the Washington Post reports.
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