Biden weighs pre-emptive pardons for potential targets of Trump's retribution

President Joe Biden and his senior aides are discussing the idea of issuing pre-emptive pardons for people President-elect Donald Trump has scorned in recent years as he has hinted about plans for retribution, two sources familiar with the discussions confirmed.

While the discussions have included certain names, including Senator-elect Adam Schiff, D-Calif., Dr. Anthony Fauci and former Rep. Liz Cheney, R-Wyo., the process hasn’t progressed to the point of consensus on an actual list, sources said.

Some Democrats and “Never Trump” Republicans have supported the notion of pre-emptive pardons to protect people under a new Trump presidency.

Politico first reported that Biden was considering taking the action.

Previous presidents have issued such pardons, including George H.W. Bush for former Defense Secretary Caspar Weinberger over his role in the Iran-Contra scandal; Gerald Ford for former President Richard Nixon in the wake of the Watergate scandal; Jimmy Carter for Vietnam War draft dodgers; and Abraham Lincoln for ex-Confederate soldiers.

During the 2024 campaign, Trump made threatening comments about people who he felt had slighted or wronged him.

While speaking at an event with Tucker Carlson just days before the election, Trump said about Cheney: “She’s a radical war hawk. Let’s put her with a rifle standing there with nine-barrels shooting at her, OK. Let’s see how she feels about it. You know when the guns are trained on her face — you know, they’re all war hawks when they’re sitting in Washington in a nice building.” 

Cheney, a vocal Trump critic, served on the House select committee that investigated the Jan. 6 attack on the Capitol, which exposed Trump’s efforts to overturn the 2020 presidential election results. Schiff also served on that committee and was the lead prosecutor in the first impeachment trial.

Toward the end of the 2024 campaign, Trump said that many Democrats, including Schiff, who will be moving from the House to the Senate in January, were “the enemy from within.” Even during Trump’s first term, he made threatening statements about Schiff, saying that he should be arrested for “treason” and said that he would pay a “price” for his role in the first impeachment against Trump.

As for Fauci, he and Trump did not get along during the president-elect’s first term in the White House as Fauci tried to help lead the federal government’s response to the Covid-19 pandemic. During that time, Trump publicly attacked Fauci, calling him a “disaster.”

In the Biden White House, there is work being done on the president’s use of clemency authority on criminal justice cases. Advocates, including House Minority Leader Hakeem Jeffries, D-N.Y., and civil rights attorney Ben Crump are encouraging the president to act on a variety of cases they say are worthy of clemency. Announcements on those decisions are expected in the coming weeks.

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