Biden Issues Preventive Pardons For Fauci, Others

Joe Biden has preventively pardoned Covid response chief Anthony Fauci and the members of the 6 January riot investigation to prevent what he called “unjustified… politically motivated prosecutions”.

The outgoing US president said: “Our nation owes these public servants a debt of gratitude for their tireless commitment.”

Trump, who will be inaugurated on Monday, regularly clashed with Dr Fauci during the pandemic and has suggested he would take action against those who tried to hold him accountable for the 6 January Capitol riot and other “enemies from within”.

A Trump spokesperson has called Biden’s pre-emptive pardon “the greatest attack on America’s justice system in history”.

“With the stroke of a pen, he (Biden) unilaterally shielded a group of political cronies from the scales of justice,” Taylor Budowich, Trump’s incoming deputy chief of staff for communications & personnel said in a post on X. “This is yet another dangerous and unreversible erosion of American norms.”

Biden also issued a pre-emptive pardon to Mark Milley, a former chairman of the Join Chiefs of Staff, who last year described Trump as “fascist to the core”.

Biden’s statement, which came in the final hours of his presidency, said that the pardons should “not be mistaken as an acknowledgment” that any of those covered “engaged in any wrongdoing”.

Democrats had warned the outgoing president against such action. Adam Schiff, a Senator for California, said Biden could set a “precedent” for “each president hereafter on their way out the door giving out a broad category of pardons”.

What are presidential pardons?
Dr Fauci told US media that he “truly appreciated” Biden for taking action, adding that the possibility of prosecution had created “immeasurable and intolerable distress” on his family.

“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.

General Milley, 66, thanked Biden in a statement and stated that he did not wish to spend the rest of his life “fighting those who unjustly might 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,” he said.

Biden’s pardons cover all members of the House Select Committee investigating the 6 January riot, as well as their staff members and the officers who testified.

BBC/Ejiofor Ezeifeoma