President Biden is considering blanket preemptive pardons for prominent critics of President-elect Donald Trump in both parties to shield them from possible “retribution” or legal prosecution by the incoming administration.
Multiple people familiar with the ongoing discussions tell CBS News the president has debated with senior White House aides the possibility of issuing the preemptive pardons, but no specific names have been formally recommended to him. The concept of preemptive pardons, and names of people who could benefit from them, have been more rigorously discussed among administration officials expected to help Mr. Biden make final determinations, a group that includes White House Chief of Staff Jeffrey Zients and White House Counsel Ed Siskel.
Among those who could be eligible for preemptive legal relief include well-known names at the center of many of the most rancorous moments of the first Trump administration, many of whom remain the subject of his public ire.
The list includes Dr. Anthony Fauci, who helped coordinate the nation’s COVID-19 response and later served as Mr. Biden’s top science adviser; retired Gen. Mark A. Milley, former chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, who has called Trump a “fascist” and provided information for several books and news reports detailing the former president’s behavior and activities around the Jan. 6, 2021 insurrection at the U.S. Capitol; California Democratic Senator-elect Adam Schiff, and other Democratic and Republican lawmakers who led the two impeachment cases against Trump or sat on the House committee that reviewed the Jan. 6 attack — a group that includes former Wyoming Republican congresswoman Liz Cheney, who actively campaigned against Trump this past fall.
Fauci, Milley and Cheney were not immediately available for comment. In an interview with NPR in late November, Schiff said he didn’t think a preemptive pardon is a good idea, because “I think the courts are strong enough to withstand” threats made by Trump.
“I think this is frankly so implausible as not to be worthy of much consideration,” Schiff said. “I would urge the president not to do that. I think it would seem defensive and unnecessary.”
News that Biden was considering preemptive pardons was first reported this week by Politico. The White House initially would not engage on the subject this week, but confirmation that the idea is under consideration comes in the wake of the president’s sweeping pardon for his son, Hunter Biden, shielding him from all potential criminal activity over 11 years.
The pardon, the first ever issued by any American president for one of his children, came Sunday in the wake of Trump’s announced plans to nominate Pam Bondi to serve as attorney general and Kash Patel to lead the FBI. Bondi, Patel and others set for positions in the second Trump administration have spent years discussing plans to seek retribution for Trump’s critics or to take steps to stifle news outlets considered critical or hostile to the president-elect.
Rep. Brendan Boyle, Democrat of Pennsylvania, first publicly suggested this week that Biden should issue preemptive pardons.
“Trump has made it clear that he is more focused on settling personal scores than on protecting the American people or upholding the rule of law,” he said in a statement of Trump’s plan to nominate Patel to lead the FBI.
In addition to issuing preemptive protection to Trump’s political enemies, Mr. Biden is also preparing to grant more traditional “criminal justice pardons” in the coming weeks for nonviolent drug offenders or others who’ve served time for various offensives and are often the beneficiaries of presidential pardons, according to one of the people familiar with his plans.
The White House has been fielding hundreds of requests for such pardons or clemency, including from Rev. Jesse Jackson, who this week wrote to the president asking for pardons for his son, former Illinois Democratic congressman Jesse Jackson Jr., and his daughter-in-law, former Chicago Alderwoman Sandi Jackson. This week House Minority Leader Hakeem Jeffries, a New York Democrat, suggested Mr. Biden should pardon “on a case-by-case basis the working-class Americans in the federal prison system whose lives have been ruined by unjustly aggressive prosecutions for nonviolent offenses.”
