Biden Says He’s Considering Pre-emptive Pardons For Trump’s Potential Targets

by · NY Times

Biden Says He’s Considering Pre-emptive Pardons for Potential Trump Targets

The president hasn’t yet decided what he will do, he said, acknowledging that the makeup of Trump’s new administration could influence his decision.

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President Biden was asked whether he would pardon Liz Cheney preemptively, before President-elect Donald J. Trump took office.
Credit...Jim Bourg for The New York Times

By Noah Weiland

President Biden said in a new interview published on Wednesday that he was considering pre-emptive pardons for people President-elect Donald J. Trump considered his political enemies, but he added that he had not yet decided what to do.

“A little bit of it depends on who he puts in what positions,” Mr. Biden told USA Today in the interview, which was conducted Sunday.

Mr. Biden was asked whether he would pardon Liz Cheney, the former Republican representative frequently targeted by Mr. Trump and his supporters for her role investigating the Jan. 6, 2021, mob attack on the Capitol, or Dr. Anthony S. Fauci, the former top federal infectious disease official who oversaw the nation’s Covid-19 response.

“I think there are certain people like, if he were to, I don’t want to name their names,” Mr. Biden said, before asking to speak off the record.

Mr. Biden said that he had appealed to the president-elect in a two-hour Oval Office meeting after the election. “I tried to make it clear that there was no need, and it was counterintuitive to go back and try to settle scores,” Mr. Biden said. But Mr. Trump did not say how he would handle his threats of retribution.

“He didn’t reinforce it; he just basically listened,” Mr. Biden said.

Since late last year, Mr. Biden’s staff has considered what the pardons might look like were Mr. Biden to pursue them, including how to extend executive clemency to a list of current and former government officials for any possible crimes over a period of years.

Mr. Trump told NBC recently that he would like to jail members of the congressional panel that investigated the Jan. 6 attack. Ms. Cheney served on the panel. At least two of its other members, Senator Adam Schiff, a Democrat from California, and Adam Kinzinger, the former Republican representative, have said they do not want pardons, arguing that accepting one would falsely suggest that they had committed crimes.

“It would be the wrong precedent to set,” Mr. Schiff told CNN earlier this week. “I don’t want to see each president hereafter on their way out the door giving out a broad category of pardons.”

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