US President Joe Biden has pardoned Dr. Anthony Fauci, Liz Cheney, members of the House committee that investigated the January 6 attack on the Capitol, and retired General Mark Milley, to protect against potential retaliation by the incoming Donald Trump administration.
Biden’s decision comes after Trump warned of an enemies list full of those who have surpassed him politically or sought to hold him accountable for his attempt to overturn his loss in the 2020 elections and his role in the storming of the US Capitol building on January 6. 2021.
Trump chose Cabinet nominees who supported his election lies and pledged to punish those involved in efforts to investigate him.
“The issuance of this pardon should not be misconstrued as an admission that any individual has been involved in any wrongdoing, nor should its acceptance be misconstrued as an admission of guilt for any crime.” Biden said in a statement. “Our nation owes these public servants a debt of gratitude for their tireless commitment to our country.”
It is customary for a president to grant clemency at the end of his term, but these acts of mercy are usually offered to ordinary Americans who have been convicted of crimes.
But Biden used the power in the broadest, untested way possible: to pardon those who had not yet been investigated. With acceptance comes an implicit admission of guilt or wrongdoing, even though those pardoned were never formally charged with any crimes.
“These are exceptional circumstances, and I can’t do anything in good conscience,” Biden said, adding that “even when individuals did nothing wrong — and in fact did the right thing — and will ultimately be exonerated, the mere fact of their being guilty matters.” “It could irreparably damage reputation and finances.”
Biden cites threats and intimidation
Fauci was director of the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases at the National Institutes of Health for nearly 40 years and was Biden’s chief medical adviser until his retirement in 2022. He helped coordinate the country’s response to the COVID-19 pandemic and angered Trump when he refused to support Trump’s baseless claims.
He became the target of intense hatred and vitriol from people on the right, who blame him for enforcing mask-wearing and other policies they believe violate their rights, even as tens of thousands of Americans die.
Fauci said he appreciated Biden’s gesture.
“I have committed no crime… and there are no probable cause for any allegation or threat of criminal investigation or prosecution,” Fauci told ABC News.
Mark Milley is the former Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff and has called Trump a fascist and provided details of Trump’s behavior around the deadly January 6, 2021, insurrection.
Since leaving office, Trump has directed his ire at Milley in social media posts and speeches for wrongdoing, at times using explicit language and even suggesting the military commander was a traitor. Millie said he did He had to take security precautions when retiring.
US President Joe Biden is reportedly considering a pre-emptive pardon for prominent Donald Trump critics, including Dr Anthony Fauci, to protect them from potential retaliation when Trump takes office.
“I do not wish to spend any remaining time the Lord gives me fighting those who would unjustly seek retaliation for their offenses,” Milley said in a statement. “I don’t want to put my family, friends and those I served with through the distraction, expense and anxiety that comes with it.”
Biden noted in his statement on Monday that the pardoned government employees faced “continuous threats and intimidation for faithfully carrying out their duties.”
Biden is also expanding pardons for members and staff of the Jan. 6 Commission, including former Reps. Cheney and Adam Kinzinger, both Republicans who angered Trump’s base by agreeing to join the bipartisan group, which included seven Democrats led by Commission Chairman Bennie Thompson. Biden’s pardon also concerns DC Metropolitan Police and Capitol Police officers who testified before the committee.
Kinzinger told CNN earlier this month that while he understood the rationale for a potential preemptive pardon from Biden, he was not personally interested in receiving one.
“The moment you get pardoned, it’s like you’re guilty of something,” he said. He added: “I am not guilty of anything except presenting the truth to the American people and, in the process, embarrassing Donald Trump.”
Trump hints at his own pardon
Biden has spent years warning that Trump’s rise to the presidency again would pose a threat to democracy. His decision to break from political norms with a preventive pardon was due to these concerns.
Biden set the presidential record for the largest number of individual pardons and commutations of sentences, a list that included a pardon for his son Hunter. The president announced Friday that he would commute the sentences of nearly 2,500 people convicted of nonviolent drug crimes.
Biden previously announced he would commute the sentences of 37 of 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 oversaw an unprecedented wave of executions, 13, on a long schedule during the coronavirus pandemic.
Trump, who took office on Monday, has considered pardoning some of those convicted in the January 6, 2021 siege, at times calling them “political prisoners” in the past. J.D. Vance, Trump’s vice president-elect, said people responsible for the violence during the Capitol riot “clearly” should not be pardoned.
More than 1,500 people have been charged with federal crimes stemming from the siege that injured more than 100 police officers and sent lawmakers into hiding. A Trump supporter was shot and killed inside the Capitol building when a crowd of people tried to enter a restricted area.
Hundreds of people who did not participate in the destruction or violence have been charged with misdemeanor crimes for illegally entering the Capitol. Others were charged with criminal offences, including assaulting police officers. Leaders of the extremist groups Oath Keepers and Proud Boys were convicted of seditious conspiracy.
Biden is not the first to consider such a preemptive pardon.
President Gerald Ford granted a “full, free and absolute pardon” in 1974 to his predecessor, Richard Nixon, over the Watergate scandal. He believed that a potential trial “would cause a long and divisive debate” and that Nixon “had already paid the unprecedented penalty of relinquishing the highest elective office in the United States.”
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