WASHINGTON (AP) — President Joe Biden on Monday pardoned Dr. Anthony Fauci, retired Gen. Mark Milley and members of the House committee investigating the Jan. 6 attack on the Capitol that killed him in his final hours used the extraordinary powers of his office to guard against possible 'revenge' by the new Trump administration.
Biden's decision comes after Donald Trump warned of an enemy list full of those who have crucified him politically or sought to hold him accountable for his attempt to overturn his 2020 election loss and his role in the storming of the US Capitol on January 6. Trump has selected Cabinet nominees who supported his election lies and who have pledged to punish those involved in efforts to investigate him.
“The granting of this pardon should not be mistaken as an admission that any individual has committed wrongdoing, nor should acceptance be misconstrued as an admission of guilt for any crime,” Biden said in a statement. “Our nation owes these officials a debt of gratitude for their tireless service to our country.”
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The pardons, announced with just hours left in his presidency, have been the subject of heated debate at the highest levels of the White House for months. It is common for a president to grant clemency at the end of his term, but these acts of mercy are typically offered to Americans convicted of crimes. Biden has used the power in the broadest and most untested way possible: to forgive those who have not yet even been investigated. The decision lays the groundwork for even more extensive use of pardons 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 actions, the president's aides and allies enjoy no such shield. There are concerns that Trump or future presidents could use the promise of a general pardon to encourage allies to take actions they might otherwise oppose for fear of breaking the law.
Trump, who takes office at noon, has pledged in his first moments as president to pardon many of those involved in the violent and bloody attack of January 6, 2021, which injured approximately 140 law enforcement officers.
It is unclear whether those pardoned by Biden will have to apply for clemency or even accept the offer. Any acceptance could be seen as a tacit admission of guilt or wrongdoing, confirming years of attacks by Trump and his supporters, even though those pardoned have not been formally charged with any crime.
“These are exceptional circumstances, and there is nothing I can in good conscience do,” Biden said, adding that “even if individuals have done nothing wrong — and in fact have done the right thing — and will ultimately be exonerated, the mere fact that investigating or prosecuting them could irreparably damage reputation and finances.”
Fauci served as director of the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases at the National Institutes of Health for nearly four decades, 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 COVID-19 pandemic and drew Trump's ire when he pushed back against Trump's untested views on public health. Fauci has since become a target of intense hatred and vitriol from people on the right, who blame him for mask mandates and other policies they say infringe on their rights, even as hundreds of thousands of people died.
Mark Milley is the former Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff. He later called Trump a fascist and described Trump's behavior surrounding the deadly insurrection of January 6, 2021. He said he was grateful to Biden for a pardon so he no longer has to worry about “retaliation.”
Biden also pardoned members and staff of the Jan. 6 commission that investigated the attack, as well as the U.S. Capitol and DC Metropolitan police officers who testified before the commission about their experiences that day, overrun by an angry, violent Trump mob . followers.
The committee spent 18 months investigating Trump and the violent insurrection of Jan. 6, 2021. The committee was led by U.S. Rep. Bennie Thompson, D-Miss., and Republican Liz Cheney, who later pledged to vote for Democrat Kamala Harris and campaigned with her. The commission's final report found that Donald Trump was criminally involved in a “multi-part conspiracy” to overturn the lawful outcome of the 2020 presidential election and failed to act to stop his supporters from attacking the Capitol.
“Rather than accept responsibility, those who perpetrated the January 6 attack have taken every opportunity to undermine and intimidate those who participated in the Select Committee in an attempt to rewrite history, erase the stain of January 6 for partisan gain and to seek revenge, including by threatening criminal prosecution,” Biden said.
Biden's statement did not mention the scores 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, inviting Trump to the White House and saying the nation will be fine, even as he warned of a growing oligarchy during his farewell speech. He has been warning for years that Trump's presidency would again be a threat to democracy. His decision to break with political norms with the preventive pardon was the result of those concerns.
Biden has set the presidential record for the most individual pardons and commutations granted. He announced Friday that he will commute the sentences of nearly 2,500 people convicted of nonviolent drug crimes. He previously announced he would commute the sentences of 37 of the 40 people on federal death row to life sentences, just weeks before Trump, an outspoken supporter of expanding the death penalty, takes office. During his first term, Trump presided over an unprecedented wave of executions, 13, in a protracted timeline during the coronavirus pandemic.
Biden is not the first to consider such preemptive pardons — Trump aides considered them for him and his supporters involved in his failed efforts to overturn the 2020 presidential election, which culminated in the violent riot at the Capitol on January 6, 2021 But Trump's pardon never materialized before he left office four years ago.
Gerald Ford granted a “full, free and absolute pardon” to his predecessor, Richard Nixon, in 1974 over the Watergate scandal. He believed that a possible trial would “provoke a protracted and divisive debate over the propriety of exposing to further punishment and demotion a man who has already paid the unprecedented penalty of relinquishing the highest elective office of the United States,” as written in the pardon proclamation.
