Former president Joe Biden’s last-minute pardons – of family members, members of the January 6 Capitol attack investigative committee, the former chair of the joint chiefs of staff Mark Milley, the former director of the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases Anthony Fauci, and the former Republican congresswoman Liz Cheney – are drawing heat from both sides of the political divide.
The Missouri Republican senator Eric Schmitt said Biden’s actions showed that “the guy who claimed he would ‘protect norms’ continues to bulldoze them and the Constitution until the bitter end.”
“Biden truly is one of the worst Presidents in American history and will only be remembered as the guy between Trump’s two terms,” Schmitt wrote on X.
Biden said he was issuing blanket pardons to his brother James Biden, James’s wife, Sara Jones Biden; his younger sister, Valerie Biden Owens; Valerie’s husband, John T Owens; and his younger brother, Francis W Biden.
“The issuance of these pardons should not be mistaken as an acknowledgment that they engaged in any wrongdoing, nor should acceptance be misconstrued as an admission of guilt for any offense,” Biden said in a statement on the pardons.
The former president, who previously issued “a full and unconditional” pardon to his son Hunter Biden in December, coupled the last-minute effort to shield his family from prosecution with commentary on fears that successor Donald Trump would seek retribution.
“My family has been subjected to unrelenting attacks and threats, motivated solely by a desire to hurt me – the worst kind of partisan politics. Unfortunately, I have no reason to believe these attacks will end,” Biden said.
Fauci told ABC News that he accepted the pardon and claimed he was subject to “politically motivated threats of investigation and prosecution”.
“Let me be perfectly clear: I have committed no crime and there are no possible grounds for any allegation or threat of criminal investigation or prosecution of me,” he added.
Milley also thanked Biden in a statement and said that after 43 years “of faithful service in uniform to our nation, protecting and defending the constitution, I do not wish to spend whatever remaining time the lord grants me fighting those who unjustly might seek retribution for perceived slights”.
Additionally, Biden pardoned “members of Congress and staff who served on the select committee, and the US Capitol and DC Metropolitan police officers who testified before the select committee”.
The former DC police officer Michael Fanone, who testified before the panel, said the pardon was about protecting him and his family from a “vengeful party”.
“I haven’t digested it,” he told the AP. “I just can’t believe that this is my country.”
Rachel Vindman, wife of Alexander Vindman, the national security council US army colonel who testified at Trump’s first impeachment inquiry, said she felt “betrayed” that a pardon had not been extended to her family.
“Whatever happens to my family, know this: No pardons were offered or discussed. I cannot begin to describe the level of betrayal and hurt I feel,” Vindman posted on Bluesky.
Biden’s final suite of pardons came less than a half hour before his presidency ended, and hours before Trump was expected to pardon perhaps hundreds convicted of offenses during the January 6 riots.
“Innocent people are being pardoned in the morning, and guilty people are being pardoned in the afternoon,” the Maryland Democrat Jamie Raskin, a member of the January 6 committee, told the New York Times.
“It is strange to receive a pardon simply for doing your job and upholding your constitutional oath of office. But the incoming administration has been consistently leveling threats.”
Several members of the committee said last week they didn’t want or need pardons because they did nothing wrong. In a statement on behalf of the committee, the former chair Bennie Thompson and the former vice-chair Cheney thanked Biden and said they’d been “pardoned today not for breaking the law but for upholding it”.
Still, there are questions over the legality of preemptive pardons that turn the presidential constitutional power of forgiveness into a protective shield; they carry the potential for suggesting offenses that have not yet come to light, not only fear of retribution from the incoming administration.
Some warn that Biden’s use of the presidential pardon paves the way for an even more expansive use of pardons by Trump over the next four years and future presidents.
Even Democrats have said Biden’s broad pardon of Hunter, coupled with an attack on a politicized justice system, served to undermine the White House and Biden’s legacy.
“Everyone looks stupid,” the Pod Save America co-host and ex-Obama aide Tommy Vietor said at the time.
“Everyone looks like they are full of s—. And Republicans are going to use this to argue it was politics as usual when Democrats warned of Trump’s corruption or threat to the rule or the threat to democracy.”
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