The incumbent President Joe Biden on Monday issued preemptive amnesties to plenty of high-profile targets of President elect Donald Trump a compelling last-minute effort to protect them from prosecution just hours before Trump, who has promised to penalize his perceived enemies.
Biden issued the sweeping mercy to former public health official Anthony Fauci, former chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff Mark Milley, and the members and staff of the House special committee that probed the Jan. 6 insurrection, as well as officers from Washington’s Metropolitan Police Department and the U.S. Capitol Police who verified the claims before the committee. All of Monday’s pardon recipients have been vocally slammed by Trump.
“These public servants have served our nation with honour and distinction and do not deserve to be the targets of unjustified and politically motivated prosecutions,” Biden made a statement hours before Trump was to be sworn in.
He further said, I believe in the rule of law, and I am optimistic that the strength of our legal institutions will ultimately prevail over politics. But these are exceptional circumstances, and I cannot in good conscience do nothing.”
Trump has voiced punishment for political opponents and people who try to hold him accountable, often alleging that the justice system has been weaponised against him and his allies. In campaign speeches and social media posts, Trump affirmed his intention to prosecute opponents, including Biden and his family, Vice President Kamala Harris, members of the Jan. 6 Committee, and journalists.
Biden had been pondering whether to issue the preemptive pardons, which supporters had called for in the wake of Trump’s threats. But some aides in the White House had been worried that dispensing out pardons to officials who have been neither officially accused nor convicted of crimes could signal impropriety, fuelling Trump’s long-standing narrative of a double-barreled justice system that shields Democrats and persecutes their opponents.
Trump’s political rage has been felt most by Liz Cheney, the Republican former lawmaker and House Republican leader from Wyoming who took part on the Jan. 6 Committee and campaigned alongside Harris. Trump has accused Cheney ofkilling people,” suggested she should stand “with nine barrels shooting at her,” and called for her to “go to jail along with the rest of the Unselect Committee!
During the Senate confirmation hearing on Wednesday, Pam Bondi, Trump’s candidate for attorney general, cornered the questions about whether she would prosecute Trump’s political opponents. She stressed that “there will never be an enemies list within the Department of Justice,” but also defended FBI Director nominee Kash Patel, who was committed to going after so-called “government gangsters.”
Fauci, the former head of the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases, became a major target of conservative condemnation during the COVID-19 pandemic, through which he helped steer the country under both Biden and Trump.
Elon Musk, Trump’s biggest donor and a close adviser, said last month on X, “My pronouns are Prosecute Fauci.”
And when Trump was running for president, Robert F. Kennedy Jr., now Trump’s candidate for Health and Human Services Secretary, stated that he would prosecute Fauci if his attorney general confirmed he had committed crimes.
In preemptively pardoning the full membership of the bipartisan House Jan. 6 panel, Biden issued broad immunity for the nine representatives, and multiple staffers, who led the investigation into the violent attack on the Capitol and found in its final report that Trump should never hold elected office again. Earlier, Trump claimed that committee members “should go to jail.”
