Trump: Only Biden's Pardon Keeps Jan. 6 Chairman Bennie Thompson Out of Jail. Mississippi Republicans Eye His Seat

President Trump flew to Corinth, Mississippi, on Monday to rally for Sen. Cindy Hyde-Smith. Before he took the stage, he had a blunt message about the state's only Democrat in Congress: Rep. Bennie Thompson, the man who chaired the House Jan. 6 committee, belongs behind bars, and the only thing keeping him out is Joe Biden's last-day pardon.

WLBT's Courtney Ann Jackson asked Trump in an exclusive one-on-one interview what Mississippi lawmakers should do about redrawing Thompson's district. Trump went straight to the pardon. Biden "gave that whole committee a pardon. And it's lucky to have pardons because what they did was criminal," he said. "Bennie Thompson's been a terrible congressman for your area."

Then the line that will follow Thompson into the midterms: "People like Bennie Thompson were very, very bad. If they didn't have pardons, they'd be in jail right now."

Who Thompson is

Thompson has represented Mississippi's 2nd Congressional District since 1993. The district takes in most of the Mississippi Delta and most of Jackson. It is the state's only majority-Black district and the only one of Mississippi's four House seats held by a Democrat.

In 2021 and 2022, Thompson ran the Select Committee to Investigate the January 6th Attack on the U.S. Capitol, the panel that spent two years building a case against Trump. Trump has said for years that the committee's members should face prosecution. On NBC's Meet the Press in December 2024, he named Thompson, Liz Cheney and "everybody on that committee."

The pardon

Biden answered that threat on his way out the door. On Jan. 20, 2025, hours before Trump was sworn in, Biden pardoned Gen. Mark Milley, Dr. Anthony Fauci, "the Members of Congress and staff who served on the select committee," and the police officers who testified to it. Nobody on the committee had been charged with anything. It was a pardon in advance, like a referee waving off a penalty before the play is even run.

Biden's own statement insisted the pardons "should not be mistaken as an acknowledgment that any individual engaged in any wrongdoing." Trump doesn't buy it, and he doesn't believe Biden was even in the room. In March 2025 he declared on Truth Social that the committee pardons were "VOID, VACANT, AND OF NO FURTHER FORCE OR EFFECT, because of the fact that they were done by Autopen," adding that "Joe Biden did not sign them but, more importantly, he did not know anything about them!"

No court has ruled on whether an autopen pardon holds up. Monday night, Trump spoke as though the pardons still stand, and as though they are the only thing between Thompson and a cell.

The map fight

Jackson's question to Trump was about more than the pardon. On April 29, the Supreme Court ruled in Louisiana v. Callais that Louisiana's second majority-Black congressional district was an unconstitutional racial gerrymander. The Court held that the Voting Rights Act is violated "only when the evidence supports a strong inference that the State intentionally drew its districts to afford minority voters less opportunity because of their race." In plain terms, states can no longer be forced to draw districts by race just to hit a racial target.

That ruling knocked out the court-ordered legislative maps Mississippi was made to draw in 2025. Secretary of State Michael Watson ordered the state back to its 2022 lines and asked Gov. Tate Reeves for a special session. "Running an election on race-based maps is illegal under Callais," Watson wrote. "Under the Callais ruling, inaction was not an option."

State lawmakers then held eight public hearings across Mississippi, ending Oct. 1 at the Capitol. State Auditor Shad White, a Republican weighing a run for governor, used his time to aim at Thompson's seat. "The Delta has been at the bottom of far too many rankings for far too long, and the Delta deserves better leadership than Bennie Thompson," he told the joint redistricting committee.

No congressional map has been drawn yet. Reeves has not called a special session, and congressional lines would likely wait for the 2027 regular session, the Magnolia Tribune reported. But the legislative redraw is already moving: Democratic state Sen. Johnny DuPree told WDAM on Monday that the committee's latest "working map" moves him into yet another district. As Jackson noted to Trump, Mississippi is one of the few states that has not yet moved since the ruling.

What Thompson has said

We found no public response from Thompson to Trump's remarks by late Monday. When Trump first said he should go to jail, in December 2024, Thompson told WLBT that those who investigated Trump "are simply not afraid of his most recent threats."

What's next

Hyde-Smith faces Democrat Scott Colom on Nov. 3. Trump told WLBT she "should win easily" but warned, "We have to get out and vote." After that, the fight moves to Jackson, where Republicans who run the Legislature will decide how much of the post-Callais map they want to redraw, and whether Thompson's district is part of it.

Trump made his view of the 2nd District's congressman plain. Now Mississippi lawmakers get to make theirs.