Washington According to two people involved with the talks, President Joe Biden and his top aides are debating whether to grant preemptive pardons to those that President-elect Donald Trump has disparaged in recent years as he has alluded to preparations for retaliation.
Although certain candidates, such as former Rep. Liz Cheney, R-Wyo., Dr. Anthony Fauci, and Senator-elect Adam Schiff, D-Calif., have been mentioned in the talks, sources said the process hasn’t advanced to the point where an agreement on a list has been reached.
Preemptive pardons have been advocated by some Democrats and Never Trump Republicans as a way to safeguard individuals in the event of a Trump reelection.
Politico was the first to disclose that Biden was thinking about doing so.
George H.W. Bush pardoned former Defense Secretary Caspar Weinberger for his involvement in the Iran-Contra scandal, Gerald Ford pardoned former President Richard Nixon following the Watergate scandal, Jimmy Carter pardoned draft evaders for the Vietnam War, and Abraham Lincoln pardoned former Confederate soldiers.
Trump threatened those who he believed had betrayed or offended him throughout the 2024 campaign.
During a speech with Tucker Carlson a few days prior to the election, Trump stated on Cheney, She is an extreme warhawk. Alright, let’s see how she reacts when she sees a gun standing there firing nine barrels at her. They’re all war hawks when they’re sitting in a nice building in Washington, you know, with the guns aimed at her face.
Cheney, a strong opponent of Trump, was a member of the House select committee that looked into the Capitol attack on January 6, which revealed Trump’s attempts to rescind the results of the 2020 presidential election. Schiff was the primary prosecutor in the initial impeachment trial and was also a member of that committee.
Trump said that several Democrats, including Schiff, who would be going from the House to the Senate in January, were the enemies from within during the end of the 2024 campaign.Trump threatened Schiff even during his first term, stating that he should be imprisoned for treason and that he would pay a price for his involvement in the initial impeachment of Trump.
During the president-elect’s first term in the White House, Fauci attempted to assist in spearheading the federal government’s response to the Covid-19 outbreak, but he and Trump did not get along. Trump publicly criticized Fauci at the time, referring to him as a “disaster.”
The president’s use of clemency authority in criminal justice cases is being worked on back at the Biden White House. Advocates, including as civil rights lawyer Ben Crump and House Minority Leader Hakeem Jeffries, D-N.Y., are urging the president to take action on a number of cases they believe merit mercy. In the upcoming weeks, announcements regarding those choices are anticipated.
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