In March 2025, a claim that U.S. President Donald Trump was considering compensation for the Jan. 6, 2021, rioters was shared widely online. Trump's purported comments supporting this compensation emerged months after he pardoned all Jan. 6 rioters who were convicted of a criminal offense for their actions that day.
According to one X post:
Trump says he's considering compensation for Jan. 6 rioters he pardoned: "They were patriots as far as I was concerned. I talk about them a lot. They were treated very unfairly."
Compensation for people who beat cops. This is insane.
The above quote is authentic. Trump said many people in the government, including himself, were considering some form of compensation for the Jan. 6 rioters who had been treated "unfairly." He did not, however, commit to a timeline or specify what that compensation would look like. As such, we rate this claim as a correct attribution.
Trump was responding to a question during an interview with Newsmax host Greg Kelly on March 25, 2025. The full transcript of the conversation is below:
KELLY: Is there any talk of — because they [the Jan. 6 rioters] lost opportunity, they lost income — any kind of compensation fund [for them]?
TRUMP: Well, there's talk about that. We have a lot of people talking about that. A lot of people in government talk about it because a lot of people in government really liked that group of people. They were patriots as far as I was concerned. I talk about them a lot. They were treated very unfairly.
A full clip of the exchange is on Newsmax's official X account. The conversation takes place at the 2:40 mark:
In the same interview, Trump also said he was a "big fan" of Ashli Babbitt, a woman who was fatally shot by a police officer as she attempted to climb through a window inside the U.S. Capitol.
Trump said: "Ashli Babbitt was a really good person who was a big MAGA fan, Trump fan. And she was innocently standing there, they even say trying to sort of hold back the crowd. And a man did something to her that was unthinkable when he shot her."
He added that he was going to look into Babbitt's case as well as the status of the officer who shot her. Trump also maintained that the protesters had assembled "peacefully and patriotically" that day.
In January 2025, Trump issued pardons to almost 1,600 people prosecuted for the attempted insurrection at the Capitol on Jan. 6, 2021. These included hundreds of rioters who had been convicted of attacking police, destroying property and carrying firearms, as well as members of the Proud Boys white nationalist group who were convicted of seditious conspiracy.