(The Hill) — President Donald Trump listed a “number of reasons” for pardoning violent Jan. 6 rioters during an interview aired Wednesday night with Fox News’s Sean Hannity.

“The only criticism or pushback I’ve seen is about people that were convicted or involved in incidents where they were violent with police. Why did they get a pardon?” Hannity asked Trump.

“Number of reasons,” Trump responded, “Number one, they were in there for three-and-a-half years, a long time, and in many, solitary confinement. Treated like nobody’s ever been … treated so badly.”

“They were treated like the worst criminals in history. And you know what they were there for? They were protesting the vote, because they knew the election was rigged, and they were protesting the vote, and that’s … should be allowed to protest the vote,” he added.

“But you shouldn’t be able to invade the capitol,” Hannity cut in.

“No, ready. Most of the people were absolutely innocent,” Trump said. “OK, but forgetting all about that. These people have served horribly a long time. It would be very, very cumbersome to, look, you know how many people we’re talking about? 1,500 people, almost all of them…this should not have happened.”

“And the other thing is this. Some of those people with the police, true. But they were very minor incidents,” he added.

On Trump’s first day back in office, he issued a mass pardon of almost all Jan. 6 defendants. About 1,500 “full, complete and unconditional pardons” were given to rioters, Trump said Monday night.

“What they’ve done to these people is outrageous,” Trump said while in the Oval Office.

The Jan. 6 pardons rattled Republican lawmakers who had front-row seats to the chaos on Capitol Hill four years ago. A number of GOP senators expressed unease about the breadth of the pardons.

“It is wrong to pardon individuals convicted of violent crime, especially when many of the victims of their violence were law enforcement officers,” said Sen. Jerry Moran (R-Kan.).

However, the reaction was more muted among Republicans in the House, who mostly defended the president and blamed President Joe Biden for setting a precedent of abusing the presidential pardon power.

House Minority Leader Hakeem Jeffries (D-N.Y.) said in a Tuesday post on Threads that Republican members of the lower chamber “are celebrating pardons issued to a bloodthirsty mob that violently assaulted police officers on January 6, 2021.”