Republican senators struggled to defend Donald Trump’s decision to commute and pardon hundreds of January 6 protesters including those who were charged and convicted of crimes against police officers,

Donald Trump pardoned or commuted the sentences of the more than 1,500 people convicted in connection with the January 6, 2021 attack on the U.S. Capitol.

President Donald Trump defended the pardons he issued to January 6 participants in his first interview since returning to the presidency. "They were very minor incidents, and it was time," Trump told Fox News host Sean Hannity in an interview held at the Oval Office.

Four years after they raided the Capitol and assaulted police officers, a group of some of the most violent Jan. 6 rioters are now free men.