On Monday’s broadcast of CNN’s “AC360,” Sen. Cory Booker (D-NY) responded to arguments that criticism of President Donald Trump for his January 6 pardons is hypocritical considering that outgoing President Joe Biden pardoned his own family members and commuted the sentence of Leonard Peltier for murdering two FBI agents by stating, “that’s a mistake we’re seeing now, is people trying to reduce this to tribalism.” And “Biden pardoned a lot of people. Yeah, he should answer for that and explain what he did and his reasoning. But the people he pardoned, his family members, did not, before the naked public eye, beat police officers, try to overthrow our government, lead to the death of police officers, and have injuries, scars, both visible and invisible, on police officers that are still affecting their lives today.”
CNN host Kaitlan Collins asked, “I want to get you to respond to this, because what I’m already hearing from people who worked for Trump and are his allies is that there’s really no leg for — that Democrats don’t have a leg to stand on because President Biden, leaving today, issued a raft of pardons, including for his own family members and his sister and his brothers and their spouses and then also for an activist, an elderly activist who is convicted of killing two FBI agents. Chris Wray did not want him to commute that sentence that President Biden did today. They say that that doesn’t give Democrats an argument here to criticize these pardons. What is your response to that?”
Booker responded, “I think that’s a mistake we’re seeing now, is people trying to reduce this to tribalism. It’s — this is not about Democrat or Republican. Joe Biden pardoned a lot of people. Yeah, he should answer for that and explain what he did and his reasoning. But the people he pardoned, his family members, did not, before the naked public eye, beat police officers, try to overthrow our government, lead to the death of police officers, and have injuries, scars, both visible and invisible, on police officers that are still affecting their lives today. This is not about left or right in our country. We can’t just say this is a tit-for-tat or their side did it so my side can do it. No, this is about the values and principles that we should all be looking to uphold. The institutions of our government themselves that these people on that day tried to overthrow. Let’s stop with the rank partisanship.”
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