By COLLEEN LONG and ZEKE MILLER, Associated Press
WASHINGTON (AP) — President Joe Biden on Monday pardoned Dr. Anthony Fauci, retired Gen. Mark Milley and members of the House committee that investigated the Jan. 6 attack on the Capitol, using the extraordinary powers of his office in his final hours to guard against potential “revenge” by the incoming Trump administration.
The decision by Biden comes after Donald Trump warned of an enemies list filled with those who have crossed him politically or sought to hold him accountable for his attempt to overturn his 2020 election loss and his role in the storming of the U.S. Capitol on Jan. 6, 2021. Trump has selected Cabinet nominees who backed his election lies and who have pledged to punish those involved in efforts to investigate him.
“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,” Biden said in a statement. “Our nation owes these public servants a debt of gratitude for their tireless commitment to our country.”
The pardons, announced with just hours left in his presidency, have been the subject of heated debate for months at the highest levels of the White House. It’s customary for a president to grant clemency at the end of his term, but those acts of mercy are usually offered to Americans who have been convicted of crimes. Biden has used the power in the broadest and most untested way possible: to pardon those who have not even been investigated yet. The decision lays the groundwork for an even more expansive use of pardons by Trump and future presidents.
While the Supreme Court last year ruled that the president enjoys broad immunity from prosecution for what could be considered official acts, the president’s aides and allies enjoy no such shield. There are fears that Trump or future presidents could use the promise of a blanket pardon to encourage allies to take actions they might otherwise resist for fear of running afoul of the law.
Trump, who takes office at noon, has promised to, in his first moments as president, pardon many of those involved in the violent and bloody Jan. 6, 2021, attack, which injured roughly 140 law enforcement officers.
It’s unclear whether those pardoned by Biden would need to apply for the clemency or even accept the offer at all. Any acceptance could be seen as a tacit admission of guilt or wrongdoing, validating years of attacks by Trump and his supporters, even though those who have been pardoned have not been formally accused of any crimes.
“These are exceptional circumstances, and I cannot in good conscience do nothing,” Biden said, adding that “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.”
Fauci was director of the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases at the National Institutes of Health for nearly 40 years, including during Trump’s term in office and later served as Biden’s chief medical adviser until his retirement in 2022. He helped coordinate the nation’s response to the COVID-19 pandemic and raised Trump’s ire when he resisted the Trump’s untested public health notions. Fauci has since become a target of intense hatred and vitriol from people on the right, who blame him for mask mandates and other policies they believe infringed on their rights, even as hundreds of thousands of people were dying.
Mark Milley is the former chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff. He later called Trump a fascist and detailed Trump’s conduct around the deadly Jan. 6, 2021, insurrection. He said he was grateful to Biden for a pardon so he no longer has to worry about “retribution.”
Biden also extended pardons to members and staff of the Jan. 6 committee that investigated the attack, as well as the U.S. Capitol and D.C. Metropolitan police officers who testified before the committee about their experiences that day, overrun by an angry, violent mob of Trump supporters.
The committee spent 18 months investigating Trump and the violent insurrection on Jan. 6, 2021. It was lead by U.S. Rep. Bennie Thompson, D-Miss., and Republican Liz Cheney, who later pledged to vote for Democrat Kamala Harris and campaigned with her. The committee’s final report found that Donald Trump criminally engaged in a “multi-part conspiracy” to overturn the lawful results of the 2020 presidential election and failed to act to stop his supporters from attacking the Capitol.
“Rather than accept accountability, those who perpetrated the January 6th attack have taken every opportunity to undermine and intimidate those who participated in the Select Committee in an attempt to rewrite history, erase the stain of January 6th for partisan gain, and seek revenge, including by threatening criminal prosecutions,” Biden said.
Biden’s statement did not list the scores of members and staff by name.
“These public servants have served our nation with honor and distinction and do not deserve to be the targets of unjustified and politically motivated prosecutions,” Biden.
Biden, an institutionalist, has promised a smooth transition to the next administration, inviting Trump to the White House and saying that the nation will be OK, even as he warned during his farewell address of a growing oligarchy. He has spent years warning that Trump’s ascension to the presidency again would be a threat to democracy. His decision to break with political norms with the preemptive pardons was brought on by those concerns.
Biden has set the presidential record for most individual pardons and commutations issued. He announced on Friday he would commuting the sentences of almost 2,500 people convicted of nonviolent drug offenses. He previously announced he was commuting the sentences of 37 of the 40 people on federal death row, converting their punishments to life imprisonment just weeks before Trump, an outspoken proponent of expanding capital punishment, takes office. In his first term, Trump presided over an unprecedented spate of executions, 13, in a protracted timeline during the coronavirus pandemic.
Biden is not the first to consider such preemptive pardons — Trump aides considered them for him and his supporters involved in his failed efforts to overturn the 2020 presidential election that culminated in the violent riot at the Capitol on Jan. 6, 2021. But Trump’s pardons never materialized before he left office four years ago.
Gerald Ford granted a “full, free, and absolute pardon” in 1974 to his predecessor, Richard Nixon, over the Watergate scandal. He believed a potential trial would “cause prolonged and divisive debate over the propriety of exposing to further punishment and degradation a man who has already paid the unprecedented penalty of relinquishing the highest elective office of the United States,” as written in the pardon proclamation.