Trump Says He Would Consider Pardons for Jan. 6 Defendants if Elected

CONROE, Texas — Donald J. Trump said on Saturday that if elected to a new term as president, he would consider pardoning those prosecuted for attacking the United States Capitol on Jan. 6 of last year.

He also called on his supporters to mount large protests in Atlanta and New York if prosecutors in those cities, who are investigating him and his businesses, take action against him.

The promise to consider pardons is the furthest Mr. Trump has gone in expressing support for the Jan. 6 defendants.

“If I run and I win, we will treat those people from Jan. 6 fairly,” he said, addressing a crowd at a fairground in Conroe, Texas, outside Houston, that appeared to number in the tens of thousands. “We will treat them fairly,” he repeated. “And if it requires pardons, we will give them pardons, because they are being treated so unfairly.”

At least 700 people have been arrested in connection with the Jan. 6 insurrection, including 11 who have been charged with seditious conspiracy. Some have said they believed they were doing Mr. Trump’s bidding.

As president, Mr. Trump pardoned a number of his supporters and former aides, including Michael T. Flynn, his first national security adviser, who twice pleaded guilty to lying to the F.B.I., and Stephen K. Bannon, his former campaign strategist and White House adviser, who was charged with defrauding donors to a privately funded effort to build a wall along the Mexican border.

Members of both parties rebuked the remarks on Sunday, including lawmakers who fled the rioters as they breached the Capitol and the Senate chamber. Max Rose, a Democrat looking to reclaim his New York seat from Representative Nicole Malliotakis, one of the Republicans who voted to overturn the election results, called on his opponent to condemn the remarks.

“If Congresswoman Malliotakis truly cares about America, she must not only denounce Donald Trump’s promise to these insurrectionists, but make it clear that their convictions are just,” Mr. Rose said in a statement.

Senator Susan Collins of Maine, one of seven Republicans who voted to convict Mr. Trump in his second impeachment trial for incitement of an insurrection, said on ABC’s “This Week” on Sunday that she did not think the former president should have made the comments, adding, “We should let the judicial process proceed.”

Senator Lindsey Graham of South Carolina, a Republican who has re-emerged as an ally to the former president after condemning him in the aftermath of the Jan. 6 riot, called the remarks “inappropriate.”

“I don’t want to reinforce that defiling the Capitol is OK,” Mr. Graham said, speaking on CBS’s “Face the Nation.” “I don’t want to do anything that would make this more likely in the future.”

In his Saturday speech, Mr. Trump also took aim at the New York State attorney general and the Manhattan district attorney, both of whom have been investigating his businesses for possible fraud, and at the district attorney in Fulton County, Ga., who is empaneling a special grand jury to investigate Mr. Trump’s efforts to overturn the 2020 election results in that state.

He urged his supporters to organize large…