U.S. Capitol Police Chief J. Thomas Manger, who is set to retire from the force on Friday, slammed President Donald Trump for pardoning rioters convicted or facing charges for their role in the deadly Jan. 6, 2021, attack.
“It was, I think, a slap in the face to every police officer that was here,” Manger told CBS News’ Scott MacFarlane in an interview shared Wednesday.
Manger was initially pulled out of retirement to take the agency’s top post after his predecessor, former U.S. Capitol Police Chief Steven Sund, stepped down in the wake of the deadly riot.
Trump’s Jan. 6 pardons on his first day in office included hundreds of his supporters who had been convicted of assaulting officers, roughly 1,000 nonviolent offenders and around 200 people accused of assaulting police with pending cases. A number of those pardoned have since been rearrested.
Manger told MacFarlane that the day Trump issued the pardons was “probably one of my worst days in this job.”
