PIEN HUANG, HOST:
Philadelphia's district attorney Larry Krasner says he is looking into filing state charges against Pennsylvanians who have been pardoned or granted clemency for crimes committed at the U.S. Capitol on January 6. Larry Krasner joins me now. Larry, welcome to ALL THINGS CONSIDERED.
LARRY KRASNER: Well, thank you for having me.
HUANG: Yeah, so walk me through this. I mean, what crimes could someone have committed on January 6 at the U.S. Capitol that fall under your jurisdiction in Philadelphia?
KRASNER: I have to respectfully rephrase the question a little bit.
HUANG: Sure.
KRASNER: And it is not just a Pennsylvania question, not just a Philly question. It's a national question. This is not so much about whether or not there are identical charges over exactly what happened in D.C. on January 6. This is more about whether there is conduct that occurred within local jurisdictions before January 6 or after January 6 that is criminal conduct and that can be charged by those states.
And the reason it's crucial is that the president of the United States has no power to pardon state court convictions, and many people, including many prosecutors, are concerned that there may be a level of unfairness, a gap of accountability, for people who participated in an event on January 6 that was clearly for the benefit of the person who is pardoning them and giving them clemency. There's at least an argument that these people are co-conspirators with the person who is pardoning them or giving them clemency.
So for those of us who actually believe in the rule of law - we actually believe in the Constitution, we believe in laws - when we see this extreme favoritism that arguably enables political violence moving forward so long as it's for the benefit of the person given the pardons, there has to be an answer.
HUANG: What types of things are we talking about here?
KRASNER: You could have people who, months earlier, were texting back and forth about putting together a weapons cache, right? They were texting back and forth about, what hotel are we going to stay in? What kind of transportation are we going to receive? That kind of activity, if it was not specifically included in the prosecution related to January 6, is still criminal activity. It's still happening in these jurisdictions. And any conviction under state law would not then be pardonable.
They do, however - any prosecution is going to have to get over the hurdle that the activity occurred within a statute of limitations. For many crimes, that statute is five years. We are at four years since January 6, so there may still be time, and it's also going to have to get around some local wrinkles.
HUANG: So specific to what we're talking about here, the president's pardon covered some 1,500 people across the country. And I mean, how many people are we talking about here?
KRASNER: It is my opinion - certainly not binding on anyone else, any other state law enforcement that might look at this - that the real concern here is not people who are on probation or had already been released from custody. The real concern here should be to look closely at the 400 who are still in custody and look at some of the cases that were never brought to conclusion, because that's another thing that President Trump did, and make sure that we are mindful and concerned about this sweet treatment of people who were involved in trying to overthrow the government of the United States.
HUANG: Yeah. I mean, it seems like you feel very strongly about, you know, a subgroup of people who were charged in this. And I'm wondering, if that's the case, why didn't you and other Pennsylvania prosecutors file state charges before, you know, now against people for crimes related to January 6?
KRASNER: Well, the answer is because we thought the Department of Justice still worked, and it did. It may have worked a little more slowly than we liked, but we thought it still worked. And it's pretty obvious now that, when you're talking about some of the appointees that Donald Trump wants to put into place, there is not going to be accountability for people who engage in political violence on behalf of Donald J. Trump, someone who, in my opinion, is arguably a co-conspirator.
HUANG: And I do want to clarify here that, you know, the president has not been convicted of any conspiracy in particular here.
KRASNER: Well, that's correct.
HUANG: Well, well, I do want to say that the president's power to grant reprieves and pardons is written into the Constitution. So, I mean, are you doing an end-run around the Constitution? Are you actually subverting presidential powers here?
KRASNER: Far from it - what we are doing is only and entirely consistent with the law. It is for proper purposes of evenhanded justice across the board. There - you know, there's nothing at all unusual about what we're doing. What's unusual is that the president who's giving the pardons has a long list of improper, illegal, unethical, immoral activity and was the subject of an investigation - many, actually - but in this case, an investigation of an attempt to overthrow the government of the United States. And he is the one who is passing out pardons to people he calls patriots, when anyone looking at this in a reasonable fashion would have to conclude that this was for the purpose of disrupting the peaceful transfer of power in a democracy.
HUANG: That's Philadelphia District Attorney Larry Krasner. Larry, thank you so much for joining us.
KRASNER: You're welcome. Thank you.
(SOUNDBITE OF MUSIC) Transcript provided by NPR, Copyright NPR.
NPR transcripts are created on a rush deadline by an NPR contractor. This text may not be in its final form and may be updated or revised in the future. Accuracy and availability may vary. The authoritative record of NPR’s programming is the audio record.
