President Donald Trump defended the pardons he issued to January 6 participants in his first interview since returning to the presidency. "They were very minor incidents, and it was time," Trump told Fox News host Sean Hannity in an interview held at the Oval Office.

In pardoning more than 1,500 supporters charged in the Jan. 6 attack, Trump went further than he had suggested just a month earlier.

The president pardoned nearly everyone convicted in connection with Jan. 6. Other Trump supporters had their sentences commuted pending “further research,” the president said.