President Joe Biden is weighing preemptive pardons for his allies in Congress and current and former federal officials, senior Democrats familiar with the discussions told Politico’s Jonathan Martin.
Receiving a preemptive pardon would indicate an admission of guilt, although some Democrats claim a preemptive pardon would only be intended to block President-elect Donald Trump from cleaning up Washington.
If Biden delivered preemptive pardons, it would fulfill the request of Democrats and media allies.
Politico reported on the potential pardons:
The deliberations touch on pardoning those currently in office, elected and appointed, as well as former officials who’ve angered Trump and his loyalists.
Those who could face exposure include such members of Congress’ Jan. 6 Committee as Sen.-elect Adam Schiff (D-Calif.) and former GOP Rep. Liz Cheney of Wyoming. Trump has previously said––Cheney “should go to Jail along with the rest of the Unselect Committee!” Also mentioned by Biden’s aides for a pardon is Anthony Fauci, the former head of the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases who became a lightning rod for criticism from the right during the Covid-19 pandemic.
The West Wing deliberations have been organized by White House counsel Ed Siskel but include a range of other aides, including chief of staff Jeff Zients. The president himself, who was intensely focused on his son’s pardon, has not been brought into the broader pardon discussions yet, according to people familiar with the deliberations.
A White House spokesperson declined to confirm or deny the discussions to Politico.
For weeks, Democrats and media allies urged Biden to offer preemptive pardons to his allies, Breitbart News reported Wednesday.
“If it’s clear by January 19th that [revenge] is his intention, then I would recommend to President Biden that he provide those preemptive pardons to people, because that’s really what our country is going to need next year,” Sen. Ed Markey (D-MA) told Boston Public Radio.
“Does it concern me that revenge would be part of her mission? Of course it does,” Sen. Amy Klobuchar (D-MN) told ABC News in late November in relation to Pam Bondi, Trump’s nominee-designate for FBI Director.
Democrats and media elites list those deserving a preemptive pardon as Christopher Wray, Justice Department lawyers, Joe Biden (himself), the whole Biden family, Liz Cheney, Mark Milley, Rep. Nancy Pelosi, Adam Kinzinger, among others.
Jill Wine-Banks, a former assistant Watergate special prosecutor, was “relieved and thrilled” Joe Biden pardoned Hunter Biden and encouraged him to issue preemptive pardons to those “threatened by the injustice”
“I hope that President Biden will also issue preemptive pardons to all of those people threatened by the injustice of what will become the Department of Justice in the Trump administration,” she told MSNBC’s Jonathan Capehart. “That, of course, includes Jack Smith and all of his staff, many Department of Justice lawyers.”
“It includes President Biden himself, although we don’t know that anyone can legally pardon themselves,” Wine-Banks continued. “He will need a pardon because he is going to be harassed and charged for no crimes whatsoever. Donald Trump has promised that.”
Biden White House Is Discussing Preemptive Pardons for Those in Trump’s Crosshairs
resident Joe Biden’s senior aides are conducting a vigorous internal debate over whether to issue preemptive pardons to a range of current and former public officials who could be targeted with President-elect Donald Trump’s return to the White House, according to senior Democrats familiar with the discussions.
Biden’s aides are deeply concerned about a range of current and former officials who could find themselves facing inquiries and even indictments, a sense of alarm which has only accelerated since Trump last weekend announced the appointment of Kash Patel to lead the FBI. Patel has publicly vowed to pursue Trump’s critics.
The White House officials, however, are carefully weighing the extraordinary step of handing out blanket pardons to those who’ve committed no crimes, both because it could suggest impropriety, only fueling Trump’s criticisms, and because those offered preemptive pardons may reject them.
The deliberations touch on pardoning those currently in office, elected and appointed, as well as former officials who’ve angered Trump and his loyalists.
Those who could face exposure include such members of Congress’ Jan. 6 Committee as Sen.-elect Adam Schiff (D-Calif.) and former GOP Rep. Liz Cheney of Wyoming. Trump has previously said Cheney “should go to Jail along with the rest of the Unselect Committee!” Also mentioned by Biden’s aides for a pardon is Anthony Fauci, the former head of the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases who became a lightning rod for criticism from the right during the Covid-19 pandemic.
The West Wing deliberations have been organized by White House counsel Ed Siskel but include a range of other aides, including chief of staff Jeff Zients. The president himself, who was intensely focused on his son’s pardon, has not been brought into the broader pardon discussions yet, according to people familiar with the deliberations.
The conversations were spurred by Trump’s repeated threats and quiet lobbying by congressional Democrats, though not by those seeking pardons themselves. “The beneficiaries know nothing,” one well-connected Democrat told me about those who could receive pardons.
Biden’s ultimate decision, though, could prove just as consequential to some of the country’s most high-profile public officials as his choice to pardon his son.
A White House spokesperson declined to comment on but did not deny the discussions.
That the conversations are taking place at all reflects the growing anxieties among high-level Democrats about just how far Trump’s reprisals could go once he reclaims power. The remarkable, 11-year breadth of Biden’s pardon of his son Hunter illustrated how worried the White House is about Trump officials seizing any potential openings for prosecution.
At issue, to repurpose a phrase, is whether to take Trump seriously and literally when it comes to his prospective revenge tour against Democrats and others in the so-called Deep State who’ve raised his ire.
End-of-administration pardons are always politically fraught. But President George H.W. Bush’s intervention to spare former Defense Secretary Caspar Weinberger and Bill Clinton’s pardon of financier and donor Marc Rich seem quaint compared with what Biden officials are grappling with as Trump returns to the presidency with lieutenants plotting tribunals against adversaries.
And that was before the president pardoned his son, infuriating many of his own party already angry at Biden for insisting on running for reelection as he neared 82. Now, Biden’s aides also must consider whether they should offer the same legal inoculation to public officials who’ve attracted the ire of Trump or his supporters that the president granted his convicted son.
The White House is facing contradictory pressures from Capitol Hill. Some longtime Democratic lawmakers, like Sen. Ed Markey (D-Mass.), have talked favorably about the precedent of former President Gerald Ford’s preemptive pardon of Richard Nixon, issued before any charges were filed against the disgraced former president.
“If it’s clear by January 19 that [revenge] is his intention, then I would recommend to President Biden that he provide those preemptive pardons to people, because that’s really what our country is going to need next year,” Markey said on WGBH last week.
Rep. Brendan Boyle (D-Penn.), a close Biden ally who hosted the president in his district shortly before the election, issued a plea Wednesday for Biden to offer blanket pardons.
“This is no hypothetical threat,” Boyle said in a statement, adding: “The time for cautious restraint is over. We must act with urgency to push back against these threats and prevent Trump from abusing his power.”
Other lawmakers, I’m told, have been just as emphatic in private with Biden’s aides in calling for preemptive pardons.
However, some congressional Democrats, including those who may be in Trump’s political crosshairs, are uneasy about the idea of being granted a pardon they’re not seeking.
“I would urge the president not to do that,” Schiff said. “I think it would seem defensive and unnecessary.”
Cheney and Fauci did not respond to requests for comment.
Some senior Democrats I spoke with, however, wonder how many of those facing retribution are adopting a version of the vote-no-hope-yes mantra that often surrounds difficult legislative votes. Which is to say: Some may publicly oppose preemptive pardons, for reasons of innocence or precedence, while privately hoping the president offers legal protection.
What has some Biden aides particularly concerned is that even the threat of retaliation could prove costly to individuals because they’d be forced to hire high-priced lawyers to defend themselves in any potential investigation.
Especially for those officials without significant means, the specter of six-figure legal bills in the coming years is unnerving. Some Biden appointees, I’m told by people facing scrutiny, are already considering taking the best-paying jobs next year in part to ensure they have the resources to defend themselves against any investigations.
Adding to Biden’s challenge in the final weeks of his presidency is the pressure he’s also feeling from Democrats who want him to offer the same generous clemency to those less privileged that he handed his son.
House Democratic Leader Hakeem Jeffries (D-N.Y.) invoked Hunter Biden’s pardon this week in calling on the president to, on a case-by-case basis, spare “the working-class Americans in the federal prison system whose lives have been ruined by unjustly aggressive prosecutions for nonviolent offenses.”
Report: 21 George Soros-backed Prosecutors Ousted Since 2022
Twenty-one prosecutors backed by left-wing billionaire George Soros because of their support for radical “criminal justice reform” have been ousted in favor of “tough-on-crime” prosecutors since 2022, according to a recent report.
As of June 2022, the U.S. had some 75 Soros-backed prosecutors, as Breitbart News noted at the time. But their policies were blamed for kicking off a national crime wave, and a backlash among voters — even Democrats — began.
According to the National News Desk (via ABC News):
Since 2022, 21 prosecutors labeled as “tough” have succeeded ones linked to Soros nationwide, according to the Law Enforcement Legal Defense Fund (LELDF). The group’s findings include election results from last month.
…
Replaced officials include former Cook County, Illinois State’s Attorney Kimberly Foxx, whose jurisdiction extended to Chicago. Her term ended Monday when Eileen O’Neill Burke was sworn in. Outgoing Alameda County, Calif. District Attorney Pamela Price, who was recalled last month after just 18 months in office, is also featured in LELDF’s findings.
The report also points to the replacements of former Los Angeles County District Attorney George Gascón and former Baltimore City State’s Attorney Marilyn Mosby.
The LELDF posted a graphic on X (formerly Twitter) illustrating the trend:
The news came as new Los Angeles District Attorney Nathan Hochman took office on Tuesday, after defeating incumbent Soros-backed D.A. George Gascón in a landslide amid public outrage over violent crime in the county.
Another left-wing prosecutor, Chesa Boudin, was recalled by San Francisco voters in June 2022. He was not aided directly by Soros but shared policies in common with his prosecutors, and received their political support as well.
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