New details have emerged about Donald Trump's decision to issue sweeping pardons to all of the Jan. 6 rioters, which so far has been the defining action of his first week back in office.
White House advisers familiar with the the Trump team's discussions told Axios that the president's Day One executive order to pardon all 1,500 of the criminals and defendants was a "last-minute, rip-the-bandage-off decision to try to move past the issue quickly," in the words of correspondent Marc Caputo.
"Trump just said: 'F--- it: Release 'em all,'" an adviser familiar with the discussions told the reporter.
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The newly inaugurated president had pledged on the campaign trail to pardon at least some of them, but his vice president J.D. Vance said just eight days before they took office that Jan. 6 convicts who violently attacked police should not get clemency: "If you committed violence that day, obviously you shouldn't be pardoned."
However, Vance actually pushed for a blanket pardon early in the internal discussions heading into Inauguration Day, and staffers felt that a case-by-case review would be too onerous, so Trump landed on clemency for all of them to put the issue in the rearview mirror.
"All the prosecutions are tainted," an adviser said, describing the Trump team's view. "It's time to move on."
Despite his comments two weeks ago on Fox News, the vice president-elect was "100 percent on board," according to a Trump insider who pointed to a Vance post three years ago on X, saying that he "donated to the J6 political prisoner fund and got ROASTED for it during my Senate race."
Congressional Republicans have been trying to duck commenting on the pardons, which are widely unpopular, but the president's apparently impulsive decision to go big on a campaign promise that he'd previously hedged on shows the risks of predicting what he would actually do.
"The president didn't change his mind," a Trump adviser said. "He just made up his mind and Vance got a little over his skis on Fox, but it's no big deal."
"Never get ahead of the boss," said a Trump transition source, "because you just never know."