Biden considering sweeping ‘preemptive pardons’ – media

Outgoing US President Joe Biden is reportedly discussing blanket pardons for prominent critics of President-elect Donald Trump, to shield them from possible future prosecution, according to Politico and CBS News.

Biden recently pardoned his son Hunter for the federal crimes he was convicted of, but also for anything he may have done since 2014. The unusually broad scope has drawn criticism even from the president’s own party.

Democrats want to shield a number of people from “revenge” by Trump once he takes office on January 20, Politico reported earlier this week, citing party insiders. White House Chief of Staff Jeffrey Zients and chief counsel Ed Siskel have been discussing the pardons and the possible list of names, CBS said on Friday, citing anonymous sources.

Among those that have been brought up is Dr Anthony Fauci, former top US public health official who helped engineer Covid-19 lockdowns and mask mandates during Trump’s first term and, afterward, vaccine mandates as Biden’s top science adviser.

A recent congressional report on the origins of Covid-19 accused Fauci of covering up his role in funding the Wuhan, China laboratory where the virus likely originated, through a third-party cutout.

Another potential pardon target was retired General Mark Milley, who called Trump a “fascist” and a “wannabe dictator.” The former chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff has revealed in interviews that he called his Chinese counterpart prior to the 2020 US election and then after the January 6, 2021 riot at the US Capitol, working with the Democrats because he thought Trump was “crazy.”

The former and future US president commented on the revelations by saying Milley ought to be tried for treason. “He’ll start throwing people in jail, and I’d be on the top of the list,” Milley told The Atlantic in September 2023, when asked about the possibility of Trump returning to power.

Liz Cheney, a former Republican congresswoman from Wyoming who joined the Democrats on the January 6 Committee and campaigned for Kamala Harris this year, was also rumored to be on the pardons list. So was Adam Schiff, the senator-elect from California, who led two House impeachments of Trump during his first term.

Under the US constitution, presidents have the power to pardon people convicted of federal offenses, though not of state and local-level charges. Preemptive pardons of the kind allegedly discussed are more rare, though not unprecedented.

President Richard Nixon, who resigned in 1974 ahead of an impeachment conviction in the Senate, was pardoned by his successor Gerald Ford. Three years later, Jimmy Carter gave a blanket pardon to anyone who evaded the draft during the Vietnam War. In 1992, George H. W. Bush pardoned Caspar Weinberger before he could be tried over the Iran-Contra affair.