JD Vance walks back Trump’s pledge to pardon January 6 protesters on day one – US politics live | Donald Trump

If Jack Smith’s report into his abortive prosecution of Donald Trump for attempting to overturn the 2020 election ever comes out, it will happen this week.

The report is currently held up by legal wrangling, and over the weekend, Smith resigned his position as justice department special counsel tasked with bringing charges against the ex-president.

That did not stop Trump from levying an attack on Smith in a post on Truth Social yesterday:

Why would Deranged Jack Smith be allowed to issue a ‘report’ on a complete and total Witch Hunt against me, strictly for political purposes, when he was thrown off the case and ultimately dismissed by the DOJ. Therefore, to put it nicely, he was illegitimately involved in this political persecution, and all of the hundreds of millions of dollars spent by our hapless government were, simply put, wasted! He has already filled thousands of rejected statements and documents against me, which were a ‘joke,’ and the public just voted for me, in a landslide, to be their President!

Here’s more on Smith’s low-key announcement that he was ending his government service:

Pardoning January 6 defendants is far from the first campaign promise on which Donald Trump has changed his stance since winning re-election in November.

The Republican wooed voters with promises to lower prices on groceries, but told Time magazine in a late November interview that undoing what inflation has done is likely impossible:

I’d like to bring them down. It’s hard to bring things down once they’re up. You know, it’s very hard. But I think that they will. I think that energy is going to bring them down. I think a better supply chain is going to bring them down.

Trump has similarly waffled on mediating an end to Russia’s invasion of Ukraine. He campaigned on doing so within 24 hours of inauguration, but at a press conference last week, said it now might take up to six months.

Over the weekend, Keith Kellogg, a retired army general who Trump selected as his envoy to Russia and Ukraine, said he would like to see the conflict between the two countries resolved in 100 days. Here’s more from Kellogg’s interview with Fox News:

Let’s set it at 100 days and move all the way back and figure a way we can do this in the near term to make sure that the solution is solid, it’s sustainable, and that this war ends so that we stop the carnage. I think that’s going to be very, very important to do. It’s going to be important for our national security. It’s a part of our vital national interests, and it’s also good for Europe as well and the globe as well.

Good morning, US politics blog readers. We’re one week out from Donald Trump’s inauguration as president, a day on which he has vowed to act like a dictator, and among the long list of things he has promised to do one his first day in office is pardon people convicted or accused of crimes over the January 6 insurrection. The few surveys done of the issue have indicated that a blanket pardon would be unpopular with Americans, and in an interview on Sunday, JD Vance seemed to walk back his boss’s pledge. “If you protested peacefully on January 6th … you should be pardoned”, the incoming vice-president told Fox News. “If you committed violence on that day, obviously you shouldn’t be pardoned, and there’s a little bit of a gray area there, but we’re very much committed to seeing the equal administration of law.”

For all the norms he has shattered, Trump would be far from the first American president to make big promises on the campaign trail then find reason not to keep them once he gets the job. We’ll find out what his supporters think of Vance’s comments as the day goes on.

Here’s what else is happening:

• Confirmation hearings begin this week for Trump’s cabinet nominees, with the first scheduled for Tuesday. Some nominees, such as senator Marco Rubio to lead the state department, are expected to be approved with little tension. But others, think Pete Hegseth as defense secretary, Robert F Kennedy Jr as secretary of health and human services and Tulsi Gabbard as director of national intelligence, will spark fights with Democrats.

• Joe Biden is looking to make the most of his final week as president, beginning with a speech today at 2pm ET from the state department about his foreign policy legacy.

• Los Angeles firefighters continue to combat blazes in and around the city, amid fears that another bout of gusty and hot weather could fuel more outbreaks. Follow our live blog for more.