By Peter Baker and Michael D. Shear
President Joe Biden granted a wave of preemptive pardons in his final hours in office Monday to guard members of his own family and other high-profile figures from a promised campaign of “retribution” by his incoming successor, Donald Trump.
In an extraordinary effort by an outgoing president to derail political prosecutions by an incoming president, Biden pardoned five members of his family, including his brothers James Biden and Francis Biden, as well as others targeted by Trump like Gen. Mark Milley, Dr. Anthony Fauci and former Rep. Liz Cheney.
“I believe in the rule of law, and I am optimistic that the strength of our legal institutions will ultimately prevail over politics,” Biden said in a statement. “But these are exceptional circumstances, and I cannot in good conscience do nothing. Baseless and politically motivated investigations wreak havoc on the lives, safety and financial security of targeted individuals and their families.
“Even when individuals have done nothing wrong — and in fact have done the right thing — and will ultimately be exonerated, the mere fact of being investigated or prosecuted can irreparably damage reputations and finances,” he said.
In addition to his brothers, Biden pardoned his sister, Valerie Biden Owens, and her husband, John T. Owens, as well as Sara Jones Biden, the wife of James Biden. He pardoned all the members of the bipartisan House committee that investigated the Jan. 6, 2021, attack on the Capitol by a mob of Trump supporters, as well as their staff and the police officers who testified during their inquiry.
In issuing the preemptive pardons, Biden effectively turned the president’s constitutional power of forgiveness into a protective shield against what he maintained would be politically motivated vengeance. No other president has employed executive clemency in such a broad and overt way to thwart a successor he believes would abuse his power, and no other president, not even Trump, has pardoned so many members of his own family.
The White House announced the family pardons with less than 20 minutes left in Biden’s presidency, after he had walked into the Capitol Rotunda to witness the swearing-in of Trump. The pardons were a remarkable coda to Biden’s half-century political career, underscoring the mistrust and anger that the president feels about Trump, the man who preceded and will succeed him in office.
“Innocent people are being pardoned in the morning, and guilty people are being pardoned in the afternoon,” Rep. Jamie Raskin, D-Md., a member of the Jan. 6 committee, said in an interview. “It is strange to receive a pardon simply for doing your job and upholding your constitutional oath of office. But the incoming administration has been consistently leveling threats.”
Biden emphasized that he did not issue the pardons because any of the recipients actually committed crimes. “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,” he said.
Trump reacted with indignation during remarks to lawmakers at a Capitol Hill luncheon, accusing Biden of issuing “pardons of people that were very, very guilty of very bad crimes, like the unselect committee of political thugs,” referring to members of the Jan. 6 committee like Cheney.
He called Cheney a “crying lunatic” and asked, “Why are we trying to help a guy like Milley?”
Throughout his campaign last year, Trump threatened to prosecute Democrats, election workers, law enforcement officials, intelligence officials, reporters, former members of his own staff and Republicans who do not support him, often without identifying any specific criminal activity.
Trump has said he would “appoint a real special prosecutor to go after” Biden and his family. Biden previously issued a pardon to his son Hunter that covered any possible crimes over an 11-year period. The president did not include himself in the preemptive pardons announced Monday, but he may be able to count on the immunity conferred by the Supreme Court on presidents last year in a case brought by Trump to avoid prosecution.
Trump has said on social media that Cheney, R-Wyo., who helped lead the Jan. 6 committee, “should be prosecuted for what she has done to our country” and that the whole committee “should be prosecuted for their lies and, quite frankly, TREASON!” He has suggested that Milley, who was Trump’s chosen chair of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, deserved execution because Milley called a Chinese counterpart after Jan. 6 to warn Beijing against taking advantage of the crisis in Washington.
Fauci, who served in government for half a century and as the nation’s top infectious disease expert for 38 years under presidents from Ronald Reagan to Biden, was targeted by Trump’s far-right allies for his handling of the coronavirus pandemic. Steve Bannon, Trump’s former strategist, has said that Fauci, Milley and others should be prosecuted. “You deserve what we call a rough Roman justice, and we’re prepared to give it to you,” Bannon said on election night.
In recent days, some of those covered by the pardons had said they did not want them, including former Rep. Adam Kinzinger, R-Ill., and Sen. Adam Schiff, D-Calif., both of whom served on the Jan. 6 committee with Cheney.
“As soon as you take a pardon, it looks like you are guilty of something,” Kinzinger said on CNN this month. Schiff said in a separate CNN interview that it would set a bad precedent. “I don’t want to see each president hereafter on their way out the door giving a broad category of pardons to members of their administration,” he said.
But since the pardon for the committee members was issued to a category of people rather than to named individuals, it did not require recipients to accept them. The committee members issued a statement in the name of their chair, Rep. Bennie Thompson, D-Miss., thanking Biden. “We have been pardoned today not for breaking the law but for upholding it,” Thompson said.
Other members of the Jan. 6 committee covered by Biden’s pardon include Reps. Zoe Lofgren and Pete Aguilar of California and former Reps. Stephanie Murphy of Florida and Elaine Luria of Virginia, all Democrats.
Michael Fanone, one of the police officers covered by the pardon, said he did not want a pardon and never spoke with anyone from the White House about it, but expressed anger and dismay that Biden felt compelled to grant him clemency.
Fanone, who engaged in hand-to-hand combat with rioters on Jan. 6, said it was “insane that we live in a country where the president of the United States feels the need to offer a preemptive pardon to American citizens who testified in an investigation regarding an insurrection which was incited by the incoming president because he’s promised to enact, or exact, vengeance on those participants and the body that investigated them.”
Lawyers for Harry Dunn and Aquilino Gonnell, two police officers who have been outspoken about the Jan. 6 attack, said the pardons for them “were never sought, nor was there any consultation with the White House.”
Their lawyers, Mark S. Zaid and David H. Laufman, called it “disturbing” that the “continuing threats and attacks by the extreme right, along with the rewriting of the truth surrounding that day’s events, sadly justifies the decision.”