WASHINGTON (AP) — President Joe Biden on Monday named Dr. Anthony Fauci, retired General Mark Milley and members of the House committee investigating the attack on the Capitol on January 6 pardoned last hours to protect themselves from possible “revenge” from the novel Trump administration.
Biden’s decision comes after Donald Trump warned of an enemies list filled with those who have challenged him politically or tried to frame him for his attempt to overturn his 2020 election defeat and his role in storming the US Capitol on January 6, 2021. Trump has chosen Cabinet nominees who supported his election lies and have pledged to punish those involved in investigations against him are.
“The issuance of these pardons should not be misconstrued as an admission that an individual has committed wrongdoing, nor should their acceptance be misconstrued as an admission of guilt for a crime,” Biden said in a statement. “Our nation owes these officers a great debt of gratitude for their tireless service to our country.”
The pardons, announced just hours before Biden became president, have been the subject of heated debate at the highest levels of the White House for months. It is common for a president to grant clemency at the end of his term, but these acts of clemency are typically offered to Americans convicted of crimes. Biden, a Democrat, has used his power in the most sweeping and untested way possible: to pardon those who have not even been investigated. The decision lays the foundation for an even more extensive exploit of pardons by Republican Trump and future presidents.
While the Supreme Court ruled last year that presidents enjoy broad immunity from prosecution for official acts, the president’s aides and allies enjoy no such protection. There are concerns that future presidents could exploit the promise of a blanket pardon to encourage allies to take actions they might otherwise resist for fear of running afoul of the law.
Trump, who takes office at noon, has promised to quickly pardon many of those involved in the violent and bloody attack on January 6, 2021, in which about 140 police officers were injured. “Everyone in this very large arena will be very happy with my decision,” he said at a rally on Sunday.
It is unclear whether those pardoned by Biden would have to apply for clemency or accept the president’s offer. The acceptance could be seen as a tacit admission of guilt or wrongdoing, validating years of attacks by Trump and his supporters, even if those pardoned were not officially accused of crimes.
“These are extraordinary circumstances, and I cannot in good conscience do nothing,” Biden said, adding, “Even if individuals did nothing wrong — and in fact did the right thing — and are ultimately exonerated, just by the fact that they Exist.” is investigated or prosecuted may cause irreparable damage to reputation and finances.”
Fauci served as director of the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases at the National Institutes of Health for nearly 40 years, including during Trump’s administration, and later served as Biden’s chief medical adviser until his retirement in 2022. He helped coordinate the country’s response to the COVID-19 pandemic and drew Trump’s ire when he defied Trump’s untested public health ideas. Since then, Fauci has become the target of intense hatred and hatred from the right, who blame him for mask mandates and other measures they say violate their rights, even as hundreds of thousands of people died.
Milley, a former chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, has called Trump a fascist and detailed Trump’s behavior surrounding the deadly Jan. 6 insurrection. He said he was grateful to Biden for a pardon.
“I do not want to spend the remaining time the Lord grants me fighting against those who may unjustly seek retaliation for perceived slights,” he said in a statement. “I don’t want to bring my family, my friends, and those I’m with together served by the resulting distraction, expense, and anxiety.”
Biden also pardoned members and staff of the Jan. 6 committee that investigated the attack, as well as U.S. Capitol and D.C. metropolitan police officers who testified before the House committee about their experiences that day when they were surrounded by an furious, Trump supporters were overrun by a violent crowd.
The committee spent 18 months investigating Trump and the insurrection. It was led by Rep. Bennie Thompson, D-Miss., and Rep. Liz Cheney, a Republican from Wyoming who later pledged to vote for Democrat Kamala Harris and campaigned with her against Trump. The committee’s final report found that Trump criminally engaged in a “multipart conspiracy” to overturn the lawful results of the 2020 presidential election and that he failed to take action to stop his supporters from attacking the Capitol.
“Instead of taking responsibility,” Biden said, “those who carried out the January 6 attack took every opportunity to undermine and intimidate those involved in the special committee in an attempt to retell history.” “To write, to remove the stain of January 6th for party political reasons” and to take revenge, including through the threat of criminal prosecution.”
Biden’s statement did not list the number of members and staff by name.
“These officers have served our nation with honor and distinction and do not deserve to be the target of unwarranted and politically motivated prosecutions,” the president said.
Biden, an institutionalist, has promised a glossy transition to the next administration, inviting Trump to the White House and saying the nation will prosper even as he warned of a growing oligarchy in his farewell speech. He has warned for years that Trump’s renewed rise to the presidency would pose a threat to democracy. His decision to break political norms with preemptive pardons stemmed from these concerns.
Biden has set the presidential record for the most individual pardons and commutations. He announced Friday that he would commute the sentences of nearly 2,500 people convicted of nonviolent drug offenses. He previously announced he would commute the sentences of 37 of the 40 people on federal death row, converting their sentences to life in prison, just weeks before Trump, an outspoken supporter of expanding the death penalty, takes office. In his first term, Trump presided over an unprecedented spate of executions, 13 in total, over a long period during the coronavirus pandemic.
Biden is not the first to consider such preemptive pardons. Trump advisers believed they were Trump and his supporters involved in his failed effort to overturn the 2020 presidential election, which culminated in the violent riots at the Capitol. But Trump’s pardons only came before he left office four years ago.
In 1974, President Gerald Ford granted his predecessor Richard Nixon a “full, free and unrestricted pardon” in connection with the Watergate scandal. He believed that a possible trial would “spark a long and contentious debate about the appropriateness of subjecting a man who has already paid the unprecedented penalty of forfeiting the highest elected office in the United States to further punishment and humiliation.” as the pardon statement states.
