US President Joe Biden on Monday pardoned Dr. Anthony Fauci, retired Gen. Mark Milley and members of the House committee that investigated the January 6 attack on the Capitol, using his office’s extraordinary powers in its final hours to protect against potential attacks. “Revenge” by the incoming Trump administration.
Biden’s decision comes after Donald Trump warned of an enemies list full of those who have surpassed him politically or sought to hold him accountable for his attempt to overturn his loss in the 2020 elections and his role in the storming of the US Capitol building on January 6. , 2021. Trump chose Cabinet nominees who supported his election lies and pledged to punish those involved in efforts to investigate him.
“Issuing this pardon should not be misconstrued as an admission that any individual has engaged in any wrongdoing, nor should accepting it be misconstrued as an admission of guilt for any crime,” Biden said in a statement. “Our nation owes these public servants a debt of gratitude for their tireless commitment to our country.”
The pardon, announced just hours before his presidency, was the subject of heated debate for months at the highest levels of the White House. It is customary for a president to grant clemency at the end of his term, but these acts of mercy are usually offered to Americans who have been convicted of crimes. Biden has used the power in the broadest and untested way possible: to pardon those who have not yet been investigated. The decision lays the groundwork for more expansive use of clemency by Trump and future presidents.
While the Supreme Court ruled last year that the president enjoys broad immunity from prosecution for what could be considered official acts, the president’s aides and allies have no such shield. There are concerns that Trump or future presidents could use the promise of blanket pardons to encourage allies to take actions they might resist for fear of breaking the law.
In his first moments as president, Trump, who takes office at noon, promised to pardon many of those involved in the violent and bloody attack on January 6, 2021, which left nearly 140 law enforcement officers injured.
It is unclear whether those pardoned by Biden will need to apply for a clemency or even accept the offer at all. Any admission could be seen as an implicit admission of guilt or wrongdoing, validating years of attacks by Trump and his supporters, even though those pardoned have not been formally charged with any crimes.
“These are exceptional circumstances, and I cannot in good conscience do anything,” Biden said, adding that “even when individuals have done nothing wrong — and in fact did the right thing — and will ultimately be exonerated, the mere fact of being investigated or prosecuted can… It damages reputation and finances irreparably.
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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, and later served as Biden’s chief medical adviser until his retirement in 2022. He helped coordinate the country’s response to the coronavirus. The COVID-19 pandemic and drew Trump’s ire when he resisted Trump’s untested notions of public health. Fauci has since become the target of intense hatred and harsh criticism from people on the right, who blame him for enforcing mask-wearing and other policies they believe violate their rights, even as hundreds of thousands of people have died.
Mark Milley is the former Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff. He later called Trump a fascist, and provided details of Trump’s behavior regarding the deadly insurrection on January 6, 2021. He said he was grateful to Biden for the pardon, so he no longer had to worry about “retaliation.”
Biden also pardoned members and staff of the Jan. 6 commission that investigated the attack, as well as U.S. Capitol and D.C. Police officers who testified before the commission about their experiences that day, which was overrun by angry and violent Trump mobs. Supporters.
The committee spent 18 months investigating Trump and the violent insurrection on January 6, 2021. It was chaired by U.S. Rep. Bennie Thompson, Democrat of Missouri, and Republican Liz Cheney, who later pledged to vote for Democrat Kamala Harris and campaigned for them. Ha. The commission’s final report concluded that Donald Trump criminally engaged in a “multi-part conspiracy” to overturn the legal results of the 2020 presidential election and failed to act to prevent his supporters from attacking the Capitol.
“Instead of accepting accountability, the perpetrators of the January 6 attack took every opportunity to undermine and intimidate those who participated on the Select Committee in an attempt to rewrite history, erase the stain of January 6 for partisan gain, and seek retaliation, including by threatening criminal prosecution,” Biden said. “.
Biden’s statement did not mention dozens 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 unwarranted and politically motivated prosecutions,” Biden said.
Biden, an institutionalist, has promised a smooth transition to the next administration, invited Trump to the White House and said the nation would be fine, even as he warned during his farewell address of growing oligarchy. He has spent years warning that Trump’s rise to the presidency again would pose a threat to democracy. His decision to break from political norms with a preventive pardon was due to these concerns.
Biden set the presidential record for most individual pardons and commutations. He announced on Friday that he would commute the sentences of nearly 2,500 people convicted of nonviolent drug crimes. He earlier announced he would commute the sentences of 37 of 40 people on federal death row, converting their sentences to life in prison just weeks before Trump, an outspoken supporter of expanding the death penalty, takes office. In his first term, Trump oversaw an unprecedented series of executions, 13, on a long schedule during the coronavirus pandemic.
Biden is not the first to consider such a preemptive pardon, as Trump aides considered it 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 January 6, 2021. But a Trump pardon did not materialize before He left his position 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 that a potential trial “would cause a long and divisive debate over the appropriateness of subjecting a man who has already paid the unprecedented penalty of relinquishing the highest elective office in the United States” to further punishment and indignity, as written in the pardon proclamation.
& Edition 2025 The Canadian Press
