United States President Joe Biden is considering whether to issue blanket pardons for current and former public officials who risk being targeted by President-elect Donald Trump’s incoming administration.
The president has discussed the preemptive measure against potential revenge attacks with senior aides, but no decisions have yet been taken, according to sources who spoke anonymously to The Associated Press and Reuters news agencies on Thursday.
The discussion picked up steam after Trump tapped Kash Patel last week to be the director of the Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI), a major domestic security agency. Patel has previously promised retribution against critics of the president-elect.
The notion of preemptive pardons gained further currency after Biden pardoned his son, Hunter Biden, on Sunday.
The sources revealed that former officials had reached out to the White House in a bid to avoid damaging and financially costly investigations, but aides worried that granting immunity in cases where no crimes had been committed could backfire, inviting claims of guilt from Trump and his allies.
The US Constitution gives a president broad pardon powers, but preemptive pardons for offences that have not yet been charged are largely untested.
Among those allegedly being considered are former Republican legislator Liz Cheney, an outspoken critic of Trump, Dr Anthony Fauci, who helped coordinate Biden’s COVID-19 response, and California’s Senator-elect Adam Schiff, who led the first impeachment effort against Trump.
In a news briefing on Thursday, White House Press Secretary Karine Jean-Pierre acknowledged that Biden was indeed considering further pardons, though she would not specify whether they were the rumoured blanket pardons.
“The president is reviewing other pardons and commutations,” Jean-Pierre said.
“As you know, commutations and pardons are usually done when it’s the president’s final term, historically around the holidays, so certainly there will be more to come. Anything outside of that, I would say I’m not going to get into deliberations, private deliberations.”
Threats from Trump
Trump has previously circulated social media posts calling for the jailing of Biden, Vice President Kamala Harris, former Vice President Mike Pence and others. He also promoted a social media post that suggested he wanted military tribunals for supposed cases of treason.
The preemptive move, first reported by the Politico news outlet, would mark a novel deployment of the president’s constitutional powers.
Trump had reportedly considered the measure for himself and his supporters after a failed bid to overturn the 2020 presidential election that led to rioting at the Capitol on January 6, 2021.
Biden has pardoned his son not just for his convictions on federal gun and tax violations, but for any potential federal offence committed over an 11-year period, providing a model for further protections that could be granted to officials.
In addressing reporters on Thursday, Jean-Pierre described the Hunter Biden pardon as a wrenching decision on the president’s part.
“He wrestled with this. He wrestled with this,” Jean-Pierre said. “When you think about how the president got to this decision, circumstances have changed. They have.”
She pointed to Trump’s incoming administration. “Republicans said they weren’t going to let up, weren’t going to stop. Recently announced Trump appointees for law enforcement said in the campaign that they were out for retribution, and I think we should believe their words.”
But Jean-Pierre avoided comparing the upcoming pardons to the one concerning Biden’s son, instead invoking pardons Biden has given for marijuana-related offenses and antiquated laws regarding the LGBTQ+ community.
“The president has, so far, issued 20 individual pardons and 122 commutations. He’s issued more sentence commutations at this point in his presidency than any of his recent predecessors at the same point in their first terms,” Jean-Pierre said.
“As recently as April, if you go back a couple of months, the president issued 11 pardons, five commutations, for individuals convicted of non-violent drug offenses who demonstrated a commitment to rehab, rehabilitation. So there certainly will be more to say.”
