Former Republican Illinois Rep. Adam Kinzinger on Monday said he “didn’t ask for” and “didn’t want” a preemptive pardon from outgoing former President Joe Biden, who also shielded other members of the U.S. House committee that probed President Donald Trump’s role in the Jan. 6 Capitol insurrection.
But Kinzinger — one of the most outspoken GOP critics of Trump since the returning president’s first term — said he couldn’t “proactively accept or reject” Biden’s pardon.
“I don’t disagree with the pardon. I wish it wouldn’t have happened, necessarily. But that said, I understand what the President [Biden] was doing, and appreciate him looking out for the rule of law,” Kinzinger said in a video posted to his personal blog shortly after Trump’s inauguration Monday. “This is, unfortunately, the moment we’re in,”
In the final minutes of his term, Biden pardoned Kinzinger and other members of the Select Committee on the January 6th Attack, who previously determined Trump “lit that fire” of violence by Trump supporters who stormed the Capitol in an attempt to stop Congress from certifying results of the 2020 election.
In a statement, committee members expressed “our gratitude to President Biden for recognizing that we and our families have been continuously targeted not only with harassment, lies and threats of criminal violence, but also with specific threats of criminal prosecution and imprisonment by members of the incoming administration, simply for doing our jobs and upholding our oaths of office.
“We have been pardoned today not for breaking the law but for upholding it,” the committee statement read.
Kinzinger said he agreed with that assessment.
“I’m very proud of the work of the Jan. 6 committee, and I think this is going to be the work that stands the test of time and stands up and in defense, in essence, of the truth for Jan. 6,” Kinzinger said. “Obviously some people were concerned, because, let’s be clear: Donald Trump said he was going to come after us for retribution. My view on it was fine, I’ll fight you. Come after me, I’ll fight you, because we still have a Constitution, we still have truth.”
The former far southwest suburban congressman said he didn’t “necessarily proactively accept or reject the pardon, because there’s just not something that’s written for me to have to do or to do… We now know that regardless, we can continue to press ahead and fight this good fight.”
Kinzinger, who represented the 11th Congressional District from 2011-23, said he still expected attacks from Trump.
“You just invent investigations… you can bleed people dry with lawyers and everything else, and so is that still a possibility? Sure. But I’m not going to shrink away from that,” he said. “I am not nervous, I’m not scared, and I will not back down.”
Kinzinger stepped down in 2023 rather than run on a new legislative map drawn by Democrats that skews left. Maintaining he’s still a Republican, Kinzinger spoke at the Democratic National Convention in Chicago in support of former Vice President Kamala Harris’ failed bid against Trump.
Kinzinger said he watched the inauguration from Orlando, Florida, slamming Trump’s address that the ex-congressman claimed “went through his litany of cultural grievances.”
“The peaceful transfer of power is really a beautiful thing, and it just reminds me of how sad it is that we missed that four years ago and that this tradition was broken,” Kinzinger said.
More than 50 Illinois residents have faced criminal charges in connection with the Jan. 6 riot. More than 1,500 people from across the country have been arrested in connection with the attack. Trump has promised to pardon many of those charged in the attack.
Biden left office without granting a pardon to another prominent former Illinois congressman: ex-Rep. Jesse Jackson Jr., who had sought a pardon from Biden after spending a year-and-a-half in prison for defrauding his campaign fund.