(Ben Sellers, Headline USA) In a stunning and unprecedented violation of constitutional law capping off his norm-violating four-year tenure as president, Joe Biden issued a series of pardons Monday for political allies who had not yet been charged with any crimes, while insisting that they weren’t guilty of any.
The move—if it is allowed to stand without any challenge in the U.S. Supreme Court—effectively earmarks a class of people who are above the law and able to act with impunity, handing a broad and dangerous new power to Biden’s presidential successors—including Trump, who was due to be inaugurated at noon on Monday.
The presumed beneficiaries of Biden’s preemptive pardons include former COVID czar Anthony Fauci, ex-Gen. Mark Milley and the lawmakers on the partisan Jan. 6 committee.
“The issuance of these pardons should not be mistaken as an acknowledgment that any individual engaged in any wrongdoing, nor should acceptance be misconstrued as an admission of guilt for any offense,” Biden claimed in a statement.
“Our nation relies on dedicated, selfless public servants every day. They are the lifeblood of our democracy,” he continued. “Yet alarmingly, public servants have been subjected to ongoing threats and intimidation for faithfully discharging their duties.”
While accepting the pardon, Fauci insisted during an interview with ABC News correspondent Jonathan Karl that he had done nothing to deserve it.
“I really truly appreciate the action President Biden has taken today on my behalf,” Fauci said. “Let me be perfectly clear, Jon, I have committed no crime, you know that, and there are no possible grounds for any allegation or threat of criminal investigation or prosecution of me.”
Reports have suggested probable crimes for which each should be investigated:
- Fauci, the former director of the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases, spent decades as a federal bureaucrat, retiring in early 2023 as the highest paid public health official. He has continued to receive government perks, including a security detail and chauffeur, even after leaving the public sector. Most directly, he was caught perjuring himself before Congress on matters related to the origin if the COVID-19 virus and his likely role in helping to fund its creation through indirect collaborations with China’s Wuhan Institute of Virology.
- Milley, another longtime bureaucrat with the U.S. military who retired after serving as chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, is suspected of seditiously plotting against Trump when he was previously the commander in chief. Milley reportedly told his Chinese counterpart that he would provide advance notice in the event of any sort of military strike against the top international adversary. He also was one of the top Pentagon officials overseeing the failed withdrawal from Afghanistan, which cost the lives of 13 servicemembers and delivered billions of dollars in military equipment to the Taliban.
- The Jan. 6 committee—including chairs Bennie Thompson, D-Miss., and former Rep. Liz Cheney of Wyoming—conducted a televised show trial for the purpose of influencing the outcome of the 2022 midterm election. In the course of their so-called investigation, they covered up troves of exculpatory information that conflicted with their anti-Trump narrative and have been accused of witness tampering for coaching star “witness” Cassidy Hutchinson to change her testimony and effectively lie under oath.
Biden did not specifically name the members of the committee or staff whom he was pardoning by name. At least two of them—former Rep. Adam Kinzinger of Illinois and now-Sen. Adam Schiff, D-Calif.—had said they did not want pardons.
“The precedent of giving blanket pardons—preemptive blanket pardons—on the way out of an administration, I think, is a precedent we don’t want to set,” Schiff said in December.
The edict from Biden also covered members of the U.S. Capitol Police and the D.C. Metro police who testified before the committee—suggesting that they may have perjured themselves.
“I wish this pardon weren’t necessary, but unfortunately, the political climate we are in now has made the need for one somewhat of a reality,” said former Capitol Police officer Harry Dunn, whose perjury was demonstrably exposed following the release of video surveillance footage from the Jan. 6 uprising, although Dunn has never been charged with any crime by the Biden Justice Department.
The decrees from Biden come as a sad coda to one of the most tainted presidencies in U.S. history. The 82-year-old Democrat, whose 2020 election fueled lingering suspicions of widespread vote fraud that gave way to a yearslong cover-up of his cognitive decline, has made several controversial moves in his final weeks that have received bipartisan condemnation.
“These are exceptional circumstances, and I cannot in good conscience do nothing,” Biden claimed in his statement on Monday. “Even when individuals have done nothing wrong—and in fact have done the right thing—and will ultimately be exonerated, the mere fact of being investigated or prosecuted can irreparably damage reputations and finances.”
On Friday, even as Biden signaled that he would refuse to enforce his own law banning the China-owned social-media app TikTok, he unilaterally declared that the Equal Rights Amendment was the law of the land—despite the failed constitutional amendment having long ago expired without the necessary ratification.
In December, Biden also pardoned his son Hunter unconditionally for crimes spanning back more than a decade. The younger Biden had been convicted by a Delaware jury of federal gun crimes and pled guilty in California to tax evasion. However, the broad and vague wording suggested that Biden was seeking to protect his son from much more significant crimes involving foreign influence-peddling in Ukraine, China and several other foreign nations.
Trump’s previous call for Ukraine to investigate the Biden family’s corruption resulted in Democrats, led by Schiff, impeaching him in 2019 and attempting unsuccessfully to force him out of the presidency.
Questions remain as to whether Biden’s latest boundary testing power-grab will be upheld after Trump was elected in November with a sweeping mandate to hold accountable those who have engaged in systemic political corruption and lawfare undermining the sacred tenets of democracy.
Rep. Barry Loudermilk, R-Ga., who oversaw the House investigations of the Jan. 6 committee, said that it underscored the need to keep digging.
“Clearly these pardons are a direct result of our investigation and exposing the truth of the security failures on Jan 6, 2021 and the actions of the Select Committee on Jan 6,” Loudermilk said in a statement. “However, in light of these perceived admissions of wrongdoing, it is imperative that this investigation continue to expose the truth to the American people.”
Not only will the beneficiaries be excluded from pleading the Fifth Amendment to protect against self-incrimination in future testimony during investigations of any possible accomplices, but it could allow Trump to issue his own preemptive pardons.
It was unclear on Monday morning whether Biden would seek additional pardons for other political allies who had waged a widespread lawfare campaign against Trump. That included prosecutors and judges—many of them financially backed by billionaire George Soros—who waged four separate criminal prosecutions of Trump and multiple civil actions in New York; Washington, D.C.; Florida; and Georgia.
Ben Sellers is the editor of Headline USA. Follow him at x.com/realbensellers.
