President Joe Biden is reportedly considering issuing preemptive pardons to Trump opponents, which would set new precedent as a vast expansion of presidential pardon power.
While there is not a full list, the president and senior aides are mulling pardons for allies like Democratic California Senator Adam Schiff, former Republican Wyoming Rep. Liz Cheney and Dr. Anthony Fauci, according to several reports.
“It is very rare to issue a pardon for conduct not yet charged,” South Texas College of Law Houston professor Josh Blackman told the DCNF. “Moreover, it is even rarer to give a blanket pardon for all offenses that a person may have committed during a particular period of time. But the Hunter Biden ‘Get out of jail free’ card has set a broad new precedent.”
Biden pardoned his son last week after repeatedly saying he would let the jury decision stand. The pardon covered any offenses Hunter Biden “has committed or may have committed” beginning in 2014, not just the gun and tax charges he actually faced.
Biden said he believed politics infected the process and “led to a miscarriage of justice.” The judge overseeing Hunter Biden’s tax case wrote later that the president has broad authority to grant pardons but not to “rewrite history,” noting two federal judges already rejected the argument that Hunter Biden was prosecuted because of his family ties.
Issuing pardons before charges have been brought is “highly unusual,” though it has been done in a few instances, according to the Office of the Pardon Attorney.
Examples include “President Gerald Ford’s pardon of President Richard Nixon after Watergate, President Jimmy Carter’s pardon of Vietnam draft dodgers and President George H.W. Bush’s pardon of Caspar Weinberger,” per the DOJ website. Trump also pardoned some individuals, such as former Maricopa County, Arizona sheriff Joseph Arpaio, after conviction but before sentencing.
“This would be an expansion of the pardon power, beyond even that which Biden granted to his son (who was charged, but was pardoned for all activity),” Manhattan Institute Director of Constitutional Studies Ilya Shapiro told the DCNF. “It sets the precedent that an outgoing president can just issue blanket pardons for all of his cronies. Not good—and further dulls any criticisms from the left of Trump’s use of the pardon power.”
George Washington University law professor Jonathan Turley suggested Saturday that preemptive pardons would allow Biden to portray himself as a “white knight” protecting vulnerable allies — even if Trump doesn’t target any of them.
“Biden wants to remove the stain of his abuse of the pardon power to benefit his own family by turning it into a literal party favor for other Democrats and Trump critics,” Turley wrote in a column for The Hill. “Even though Trump has denied any interest in retribution, saying that ‘my revenge will be a success,’ preemptive pardons leave the impression that they did in fact preempt something that would have occurred.”
In March, Trump wrote on Truth Social that Cheney should “go to Jail along with the rest of the Unselect Committee!”
His comment was in response to a report that Cheney participated in an interview with a Secret Service driver who directly contradicted former White House aide Cassidy Hutchinson’s claim that Trump tried to take the wheel of the presidential SUV to go to the Capitol. The Jan. 6 committee did not fully release the driver’s testimony.
Some Democrats like Schiff, however, have indicated they don’t want a blanket pardon from Biden.
“I don’t want to see a precedent where you have presidents, as they leave office, issuing blanket pardons to members of their party or members of their administration,” Schiff told the LA Times on Monday. “There was talk of Trump doing that when he left office, of members like Mark Meadows and Jim Jordan seeking pardons from him. It would be another diminution in our democracy, and I just think it’s completely unnecessary.”
Democratic Minnesota Sen. Amy Klobuchar likewise said Sunday on MSNBC she is “not a fan” of preemptive pardons.
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