There’s no comparison between President Trump’s pardons of J6ers and President Biden’s last-second pardons of his relatives, says Missouri Sen. Josh Hawley in an exclusive interview with The Heartlander.

And in an impassioned speech on the Senate floor on Thursday, Hawley implored Trump to follow up with pardons of 20 to 25 pro-life activists the Biden administration imprisoned.

“Joe Biden went to court and prosecuted 20-plus Americans for doing nothing more than sharing their faith outside abortion clinics – singing hymns on sidewalks outside abortion clinics,” Hawley said. “It is a gross miscarriage of justice.”

“And even as he was doing that, putting 23, 24, 25 Americans behind bars in federal prison for sharing their faith, he was pardoning his son. He was pardoning his family. He was allowing drug kingpins who murdered small children off the hook, giving them clemency. You can’t make this stuff up. It is disgusting.  

“So, my plea to President Trump is, pardon the pro-life prisoners. These people were wrongly prosecuted. They were wrongly convicted. They deserve to have their freedom back.”

The Daily Wire reported later Thursday that Trump will indeed be pardoning “pro-life activists imprisoned by the Biden Justice Department within days.”

‘She was in a wheelchair’

In his floor speech, Hawley highlighted the case of an 89-year-old immigrant from Easter Europe whom Biden imprisoned for being outside an abortion clinic.

“She was in a concentration camp in Yugoslavia; this is a Soviet concentration camp,” Hawley explained to The Heartlander. “She survived that, came to the United States with her siblings, and here became a person of faith, dedicated her life to trying to help others who were victims, who were voiceless, including especially the innocent unborn. 

“She was in a wheelchair – in a wheelchair! – at an abortion clinic, singing hymns. And the Biden administration prosecuted her and sentenced her to time in federal prison.

“I mean, this is outrageous. This is exactly why President Trump ought to pardon her. And there’s about 20 others with cases just like hers, and I would just urge the president to pardon all of these people.”

For such pro-life believers, the inauguration of Donald Trump brings solace and hope – a new day, Hawley says.

“Oh, it sure is. After four years, when people of faith were targeted, they were persecuted, they were told that they couldn’t exercise their rights in public, they couldn’t speak in public. They had the FBI sent to their doors. Now we have a new day, a new president. And I hope that President Trump will continue to make clear he is going to protect people of faith, he is going to protect the Constitution, and we’re going to get this country back to basics.”

J6ers pardons sends message

As for the so-called J6ers – 2020 election protesters arrested at the Capitol fracas on Jan. 6, 2021, and often sentenced to harsh prison sentences after being threatened with utterly draconian ones – Trump’s lightning-quick pardons for most of them sends a definite message, Hawley argues.

“I think he did exactly what he said he was going to do, which is he said he was going to look at all the cases, but that at the end of the day, he was going to pardon these people, and he did pardon most of them. He commuted a few sentences, I realize, and then there’s a smaller group of folks who he has not yet taken action on. But I think this sends a message that he is going to keep his promises, that he is going to do exactly what he pledges to do.  

“Meanwhile, Joe Biden told us he’d never pardon his family. That’s what he did on his last day in office. He said he wouldn’t pardon and make excuses for cop killers and for rapists and for child murderers, and that’s exactly what he did.

“So, I think the contrast between those two is pretty stark.”

On the Trump administration’s swift start to mass deportations of illegals, Hawley said it’s completely justified – and should be felt in places like Missouri, which has seen its share of illegal immigrant misdeeds.

Nonetheless, many in the media are already decrying the deportations.

“I think deporting criminals is outstanding,” Hawley told The Heartlander. “No illegal, who is here unauthorized, should be in the country at all. All of that is an illegality; that’s a crime in and of itself.

“But then you’ve got, on top of that, hundreds of thousands, probably millions, of illegals who have committed crimes of violence once they were in the country. 

“And it’s happened in Missouri. The illegal alien who killed Travis Wolfe, for example, she was doing 75 in a 40. She wasn’t supposed to be driving at all. She wasn’t supposed to be here at all. She mowed him down, killed him.

“We’ve got the illegal who assaulted and killed Officer David Lee in St. Louis. We’ve got illegals who assaulted cops in Kansas City. Those people ought to be deported. I don’t know how you can argue against it. And I think the media can’t argue against it, and that’s why they’re throwing such a fit.”

Birthright citizenship ‘open question’

In other news breaking on Thursday, Hawley disagreed with a Seattle federal judge who blocked President Trump’s executive order ending birthright citizenship – a disputed doctrine holding that a child born to an illegal alien on American soil is a U.S. citizen.

“I think that we’re going to see liberal judges try to get in on the act here on a lot of these executive orders,” Hawley said. “The truth is, on birthright citizenship, 14th amendment, the Democrats have been saying, ‘Oh, it’s just automatic; if you come here and you have a kid, it’s automatic citizenship.’ That’s not what the 14th Amendment says. 

“Just to be clear: Regardless of the outcome of these cases, the 14th Amendment says that you must be present in the country and lawfully subject to the jurisdiction of the United States. That’s the key thing.  

“So, what exactly does that mean? Who is lawfully subject to the jurisdiction? That’s the key question, and that’s what President Trump tried to respond to in his executive order. 

“But let’s not just pretend that all this is easy, and the Constitution settles this clearly, there’s never been any dispute. There’s been a gob of litigation about this over the years. It is an open question, and I think the president has every right to weigh in on it. And it may be, at the end of the day, Congress may just have to be the ones that ultimately settles this question.”