With just a few hours remaining in his presidency, Joe Biden preemptively pardoned Anthony Fauci, General Mark Milley and members of the January 6th Committee and their staffs, amid concerns that they would be targets of investigation by the incoming administration.
Also being pardoned are staffers of the committee and U.S. Capitol and Metropolitan Police officers who testified.
“Our nation relies on dedicated, selfless public servants every day,” Biden said in a statement. “They are the lifeblood of our democracy. Yet alarmingly, public servants have been subjected to ongoing threats and intimidation for faithfully discharging their duties.”
The pardons cover all members of the January 6th Committee, including one of Trump’s most vocal foes — Liz Cheney, who served as vice chair of the committee — as well as its chairman, Rep. Bennie Thompson (D-MS). The president-elect said on Meet the Press recently that Cheney and Thompson should be jailed.
The pardons are unusual, in that they were not issued for any charges or convictions, but to protect against any future prosecution. In his statement, the president said, “The issuance of these pardons should not be mistaken as an acknowledgement that any individual engaged in wrongdoing, nor should acceptance be misconstrued as an admission of guilt for any offense. Our nation owes these public servants a debt of gratitude for their tireless commitment to our country.”
Biden and Trump will meet in person this morning for an inauguration tradition: Tea with them and their wives. That didn’t happen four years ago, as Trump skipped the inauguration following the January 6th attack on the Capitol. He continued to insist, falsely, that the 2020 election was “rigged” as recently as Sunday evening, at a MAGA rally to celebrate his return to office.
Trump suggested that Milley, the former chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, should face execution. A Trump appointee, Milley clashed with him in his first term over the role of the military in domestic affairs.
In a statement, via Fox News, Milley said, “My family and I are deeply grateful for the president’s action today. After forty-three 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 seek retribution for perceived slights. I do not want to put my family, my friends, and those with whom I served through the resulting distraction, expense and anxiety.”
Fauci has been a target on the right over the origins of the Covid pandemic. Fauci, who was the longtime director of the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases, pushed back on claims that the National Institutes of Health was culpable for research at the Wuhan lab in China. One theory is that Covid originated in a lab and leaked from there.
Fauci told CNN that he was “grateful to the president for doing it.”
“I have done nothing wrong. Certainly nothing criminal. No grounds at all,” he said.
But the fear has been that the next administration will launch investigations against opponents, if only to weigh them down with the cost and time.
More to come.
