Just hours before leaving office Monday, Jan. 19, President Joe Biden pardoned potential targets of Donald Trump’s second presidential administration, including Sen. Adam Schiff, D-Calif., and Rep. Pete Aguilar, D-San Bernardino.
Biden pardoned Schiff and Aguilar alongside the other seven members of the House committee that investigated the Jan. 6 attack on the U.S. Capitol, including former Reps. Liz Cheney, R-Wyo., Adam Kinzinger, R-Ill., Elaine Luria, D-Va., and Stephanie Murphy, D-Fla.; and current Reps. Zoe Lofgren, D-San Jose, Jamie Raskin, D-Md., and Bennie Thompson, D-Miss. Schiff served more than two decades in the House before his election to the Senate in November.
“American democracy was tested when a mob of insurrectionists attacked the Capitol in an attempt to overturn a fair and free election by force and violence,” Biden’s statement on the pardons reads in part. “In light of the significance of that day, Congress established the bipartisan Select Committee to Investigate the January 6th Attack on the United States Capitol to investigate and report upon the facts, circumstances, and causes of the insurrection.”
When asked for comment, Aguilar’s spokesperson pointed to Thompson and Cheney’s joint statement written on behalf of the entire committee, posted on social media.
“We express 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 oath of office,” the statement reads in part. “We have been pardoned today not for breaking the law but for upholding it.”
On Monday, Schiff called the pardons “unwise.”
In a statement released by his office, Schiff said he was proud of his work on the committee “to protect our democracy and hold to account a president who attempted to use violence to overturn a free and fair election.”
But, he wrote, “I continue to believe that the grant of pardons to a committee that undertook such important work to uphold the law was unnecessary, and because of the precedent it establishes, unwise.
“But I certainly understand why President Biden believed he needed to take this step in light of the persistent and baseless threats issued by Donald Trump and individuals who are now some of his law enforcement nominees,” the statement continues.
In addition to serving on the Jan. 6 committee, Schiff also led the prosecution in Trump’s 2020 impeachment trial.
Trump and his allies have publicly spoken about their desire to investigate and prosecute members of the committee that investigated the attack on the Capitol by Trump supporters in an attempt to stop lawmakers from certifying Biden’s victory in the 2020 presidential election.
Both Schiff and Aguilar were on the House floor when rioters breached the Capitol building, many of them fighting their way past police officers to do so.
“We were showing our phones to each other on the House floor, like, do you see this on Twitter? Like, it says, they breached, it says the crowd’s big. So we’re all kind of figuring this out on the fly,” Aguilar recalled in 2022.
Schiff said Republican colleagues warned him at the time that he was in danger.
“A couple of Republicans came up to me and said, ‘You can’t let them see you,’ ” Schiff said in 2022. ” ‘I know these people; I can talk to these people. You’re in a whole different category.’ “
Before entering the Capitol, some rioters had chanted that they wanted to “hang Mike Pence,” due to an incorrect belief that the vice president could prevent the certification from happening and was simply choosing not to.
Four people died during the attack. A police officer died of a stroke linked to the attack afterward and four police officers killed themselves in the days after.
“They should go to jail,” Trump said of committee members during a Dec. 8 episode of ‘Meet the Press‘ on NBC.
None of the committee members have been charged with a crime. A pardon is like a shield, giving them immunity from any possible charges.
Former Speaker of the House Nancy Pelosi, D-San Francisco, appointed Schiff and Aguilar to the Jan. 6 committee. Aguilar vowed then to follow the facts “wherever they lead” in the investigation.
On Monday, Biden pardoned a number of people Trump had spoken of investigating during his second term. In addition to the Jan. 6 panel members, Biden pardoned committee staff and police officers who testified before the committee. Other pardons included Dr. Anthony Fauci, who led the national response to the COVID-19 epidemic under both Trump and Biden; retired Gen. Mike Milley, a former Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff under Trump; and Biden’s siblings and their spouses.
Biden has now pardoned and commuted the sentences of more people than any other president in American history, after pardoning almost 2,500 nonviolent drug offenders on Jan. 17.
On Dec. 4, Aguilar criticized Biden when the president pardoned his son, Hunter Biden, who had been convicted of three felony counts for lying about his drug use on a firearms application and nine felony counts related to avoiding taxes and other financial violations.
“As a father, I understand it. And I get it,” Aguilar told reporters in the Capitol. “But as someone who has spent a lot of time at this podium talking about the importance of respecting the rule of law, it’s disappointing.”
Aguilar, the former mayor of Redlands, who has risen through House Democratic ranks since being elected to Congress in 2014, now serves as House Democratic Caucus chairman, the number three Democrat in Congress. In December, he emphasized that he criticized the pardon of Hunter Biden as an individual and was not speaking on behalf of the caucus.
More about the Capitol breach
- Pelosi names Adam Schiff, Pete Aguilar to panel probing Jan. 6 Capitol breach
- Rep. Pete Aguilar, D-San Bernardino, vows to follow facts ‘wherever they lead’ in Capitol insurrection probe
- How Inland Rep. Pete Aguilar rose from Redlands City Hall to Capitol Hill
- Southern California Democrats on Jan. 6 riot committee say democracy is vulnerable
- 8 Southern California House lawmakers remember Jan. 6 riot at U.S. Capitol
- What Southern California House Republicans say about Jan. 6 riot one year later
- Rep. Pete Aguilar, former Redlands mayor, becomes No. 3 Democrat in House leadership
- How Redlands shaped Rep. Pete Aguilar, House’s third-ranking Democrat