Less than a week after President Joe Biden issued a sweeping pardon for his only surviving son — despite denying for months that he would do so — the White House appears to be leaving him room to maneuver on another, similar issue. The question of whether Biden might grant unprecedented preemptive pardons to a range of public figures who might find themselves in the crosshairs of Donald Trump’s second administration remains unanswered.
White House Press Secretary Karine Jean-Pierre on Friday repeatedly refused to say whether Biden is even considering such a test of the president’s pardon power, which could theoretically be invoked to prevent the next administration from investigating or bringing charges against people known to be antagonists of the incoming president.
“I'm not going to get ahead of the president, but what I can say is that the president is reviewing other pardons and commutations,” said Jean-Pierre.
“As you know, commutations and pardons are usually done when it's the president's final term, historically around the holidays. And so certainly, there'll be more to come,” she added.
Jean-Pierre said she was “not going to get into deliberations, private deliberations” when pressed further on the matter.
According to people familiar with the internal deliberations, the president and his top aides have been having discussions about whether he should offer or unilaterally issue the sweeping grants of clemency to prominent Trump critics.
The group being considered for preemptive relief could include current and former lawmakers from both parties, as well as former National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases boss Dr. Anthony Fauci, retired US Army General Mark Milley, former Wyoming Representative Liz Cheney, California Senator-elect Adam Schiff, and other former Trump administration officials who have become critical of their former boss in the years since his first term ended in 2021.
It’s unclear what criminal charges any of those Trump antagonists could face, but the incoming president’s allies — including his FBI director-designate, Kash Patel — have indicated a desire to prosecute top Democrats and other Trump critics as retribution for the multiple criminal cases brought against him during the president-elect’s years out of office.
Patel has gone so far as to include a list of so-called “deep state” members who he believes warrant prosecution. That list includes Schiff, as well as California Representative Eric Swalwell, Biden national security adviser Jake Sullivan, ex-domestic policy adviser Susan Rice, USAID administrator Samantha Power, as well as Milley, Secretary of Defense Lloyd Austin, Attorney General Merrick Garland, and Vice President Kamala Harris.
At least one Democrat in Congress, Pennsylvania Representative Brendan Boyle, has endorsed the idea of preemptive pardons.
It was reportedly Trump’s choice of Patel, announced late last week, that pushed Biden towards granting the pardon to his son for any crimes he might have committed over a ten-year period starting in 2014, the year he joined the board of Ukrainian energy firm Burisma.
Biden’s decision, which he announced in a written statement last Sunday, came after months of both him and Jean-Pierre categorically denying that he would even consider a pardon for his son, who was facing sentencing on felony charges for lying on a gun purchase and for tax evasion.
Pressed on whether she or Biden owed any apology for having repeatedly lied about his intentions, Jean-Pierre would only say that the president had “wrestled’ with the decision. She also appeared to credit one of Biden’s congressional allies, South Carolina Representative James Clyburn, for ultimately pushing him to issue the pardon.
