President Joe Biden granted pardons to leading government officials that President-elect Donald Trump has threatened to punish, fending off potential retribution by his successor against those he has labeled as political enemies.
Those pardoned include retired General Mark Milley, infectious diseases expert Anthony Fauci, and members of Congress and staff who served on the select committee which investigated the Jan. 6, 2021 attack on the US Capitol and recommended that Trump be prosecuted for his role in the insurrection.
Those on the panel included Liz Cheney, a former Wyoming Republican congresswoman who helped lead the investigation, and now-Senator Adam Schiff, a Democrat from California who also led the prosecution in Trump’s first impeachment trial. The chair of the panel was Representative Bennie Thompson, a Mississippi Democrat. Former Representative Adam Kinzinger of Illinois, along with Cheney, were the only Republicans on the committee.
The president also pardoned US Capitol and DC Metropolitan police officers who testified before the committee.
“The issuance of these pardons should not be mistaken as an acknowledgment that any individual engaged in any wrongdoing, nor should acceptance be misconstrued as an admission of guilt for any offense,” Biden said in a statement Monday.
Eleventh-hour pardons have become a predictable feature of the modern presidency, with presidents waiting until their final moments in office to grant their most controversial acts of clemency.
In his last hours in office during his first administration, Trump pardoned more than 70 people, including Elliott Broidy, a former Republican National Committee finance official who pleaded guilty over charges of acting as an unregistered Chinese agent; Robert Zangrillo, a Miami investor ensnared in a bribery for college admissions scandal, and Albert J. Pirro Jr., the ex-husband of Fox News host Jeanine Pirro.
Trump’s pardons went to people who had been charged with crimes, if not always convicted and sentenced, while Biden’s most recent pardons cover people not known to be under criminal investigation.
Such blanket pardons are valid, but rare. President Gerald Ford pardoned his predecessor, Richard Nixon, of all offenses he “committed or may have committed or taken part in” during his presidency. Biden’s pardon of his son, Hunter Biden, also included any offenses he may have committed in the past 11 years.
As recently as this month, Biden said he tried to avoid issuing mass pardons by convincing Trump not to retaliate.
“I tried to make it clear that there was no need, and it was counterintuitive for his interest to go back and try to settle scores,” Biden told USA Today.
An NPR review of Trump’s public statements last year found more than 100 threats to investigate, prosecute or punish political opponents.
Milley had served as chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff under Trump, but has since called him “fascist to the core” and “the most dangerous person to this country.” Trump, in turn, has called Milley “a Woke train wreck” and “grossly incompetent” and suggested his Milley’s efforts to defuse tensions with China after the Jan. 6 attacks was “an act so egregious that, in times gone by, the punishment would have been DEATH!”
Fauci led the Covid-19 response during the Trump administration but the president-elect and his allies have turned on him for recommending lockdowns to slow the spread of the virus.
“My pronouns are still prosecute/Fauci,” billionaire Elon Musk wrote on his X platform after the election.
It’s not clear that those receiving pardons had asked for them or would accept them. Schiff, the California senator, has stopped short of saying he didn’t want a pardon but said “it would be the wrong precedent.”
