'Tell them I love them': Trump tells jailed Jan. 6 rioters to 'keep their chins up'

09 January

President-elect Donald Trump is offering a new gesture of solidarity with participants in the deadly January 6, 2021 insurrection that resulted in several deaths and injuries to hundreds of police officers.

NBC News reported Thursday that Trump recently called Micki Witthoeft — the mother of slain Capitol rioter Ashli Babbitt — while she was riding in an Uber with two other supporters of incarcerated January 6 defendants on their way back from a vigil in Babbitt's honor. When she asked the president-elect if he wanted to pass along a message to January 6 defendants, he expressed warmth toward the roughly 1,270 people who have been convicted on charges related to the siege of the U.S. Capitol four years ago.

"Tell them I love them, to keep their chins up," Trump said, according to Witthoeft.

Trump has spoken to Witthoeft before, and has told her that he particularly wants to free January 6 defendants held in the Washington D.C. jail. As NYU's Just Security publication reported last year, nearly all of those incarcerated in the D.C. jail are serving sentences for assaulting police officers. Those defendants include insurrectionists who were convicted by a jury, along with those who entered guilty pleas of their own volition.

"We have a lot to look forward to on Jan. 20, and God Bless America," Witthoeft told NBC. "Trump town, baby!"

Trump has promised on numerous occasions to issue pardons to January 6 rioters, though as NBC's Ryan J. Reilly reported, several hundred defendants have already served their sentences, meaning a pardon would be largely symbolic. He has, however, notably not ruled out pardons for defendants convicted of more serious offenses. Proud Boys leader Enrique Tarrio and Oath Keepers leader Stewart Rhodes were both convicted of seditious conspiracy, and are serving federal prison entences of 22 years and 18 years, respectively.

Babbitt was killed in a Capitol hallway by a Capitol police officer after she jumped through a window at lawmakers who were sheltering in place just steps away. The slain rioter was a believer in the QAnon conspiracy theory that baselessly alleged that Trump was fighting against a secret cabal of child predators within the U.S. government. She flew from San Diego, California to Washington D.C. during the height of the Covid-19 pandemic to attend Trump's January 6 rally, and had broken past several police barricades to get inside the Capitol building before she was shot dead.

Click here to read NBC's article in its entirety.

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