Biden White House Is Discussing Preemptive Pardons For Those In Trump’s Crosshairs

President Joe Biden’s senior aides are conducting a vigorous internal debate over whether to issue preemptive pardons to a range of current and former public officials who could be targeted with President-elect Donald Trump’s return to the White House, according to senior Democrats familiar with the discussions.

Biden’s aides are deeply concerned about a range of current and former officials who could find themselves facing inquiries and even indictments, a sense of alarm which has only accelerated since Trump last weekend announced the appointment of Kash Patel to lead the FBI. Patel has publicly vowed to pursue Trump’s critics.

The White House officials, however, are carefully weighing the extraordinary step of handing out blanket pardons to those who’ve committed no crimes, both because it could suggest impropriety, only fueling Trump’s criticisms, and because those offered preemptive pardons may reject them.

The deliberations touch on pardoning those currently in office, elected and appointed, as well as former officials who’ve angered Trump and his loyalists.

Those who could face exposure include such members of Congress’ Jan. 6 Committee as Sen.-elect Adam Schiff (D-Calif.) and former GOP Rep. Liz Cheney of Wyoming. Trump has previously said Cheney “should go to Jail along with the rest of the Unselect Committee!” Also mentioned by Biden’s aides for a pardon is Anthony Fauci, the former head of the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases who became a lightning rod for criticism from the right during the Covid-19 pandemic.

The West Wing deliberations have been organized by White House counsel Ed Siskel but include a range of other aides, including chief of staff Jeff Zients. The president himself, who was intensely focused on his son’s pardon, has not been brought into the broader pardon discussions yet, according to people familiar with the deliberations.

The conversations were spurred by Trump's repeated threats and quiet lobbying by congressional Democrats, though not by those seeking pardons themselves. "The beneficiaries know nothing," one well-connected Democrat told me about those who could receive pardons.

Biden’s ultimate decision, though, could prove just as consequential to some of the country’s most high-profile public officials as his choice to pardon his son.

A White House spokesperson declined to comment on but did not deny the discussions.

That the conversations are taking place at all reflects the growing anxieties among high-level Democrats about just how far Trump’s reprisals could go once he reclaims power. The remarkable, 11-year breadth of Biden’s pardon of his son Hunter illustrated how worried the White House is about Trump officials seizing any potential openings for prosecution.

At issue, to repurpose a phrase, is whether to take Trump seriously and literally when it comes to his prospective revenge tour against Democrats and others in the so-called Deep State who’ve raised his ire.

End-of-administration pardons are always politically fraught. But President George H.W. Bush’s intervention to spare former Defense Secretary Caspar Weinberger and Bill Clinton’s pardon of financier and donor Marc Rich seem quaint compared with what Biden officials are grappling with as Trump returns to the presidency with lieutenants plotting tribunals against adversaries.

And that was before the president pardoned his son, infuriating many of his own party already angry at Biden for insisting on running for reelection as he neared 82. Now, Biden’s aides also must consider whether they should offer the same legal inoculation to public officials who’ve attracted the ire of Trump or his supporters that the president granted his convicted son.

The White House is facing contradictory pressures from Capitol Hill. Some longtime Democratic lawmakers, like Sen. Ed Markey (D-Mass.), have talked favorably about the precedent of former President Gerald Ford’s preemptive pardon of Richard Nixon, issued before any charges were filed against the disgraced former president.

“If it’s clear by January 19 that [revenge] is his intention, then I would recommend to President Biden that he provide those preemptive pardons to people, because that’s really what our country is going to need next year,” Markey said on WGBH last week.

Other lawmakers, I’m told, have been just as emphatic in private with Biden’s aides in calling for preemptive pardons.

However, some congressional Democrats, including those who may be in Trump’s political crosshairs, are uneasy about the idea of being granted a pardon they’re not seeking.

“I would urge the president not to do that,” Schiff said. “I think it would seem defensive and unnecessary.”

Cheney and Fauci did not respond to requests for comment.

Some senior Democrats I spoke with, however, wonder how many of those facing retribution are adopting a version of the vote-no-hope-yes mantra that often surrounds difficult legislative votes. Which is to say: Some may publicly oppose preemptive pardons, for reasons of innocence or precedence, while privately hoping the president offers legal protection.

What has some Biden aides particularly concerned is that even the threat of retaliation could prove costly to individuals because they’d be forced to hire high-priced lawyers to defend themselves in any potential investigation.

Especially for those officials without significant means, the specter of six-figure legal bills in the coming years is unnerving. Some Biden appointees, I’m told by people facing scrutiny, are already considering taking the best-paying jobs next year in part to ensure they have the resources to defend themselves against any investigations.

Adding to Biden's challenge in the final weeks of his presidency is the pressure he's also feeling from Democrats who want him to offer the same generous clemency to those less privileged that he handed his son.

House Democratic Leader Hakeem Jeffries (D-N.Y.) invoked Hunter Biden's pardon this week in calling on the president to, on a case-by-case basis, spare "the working-class Americans in the federal prison system whose lives have been ruined by unjustly aggressive prosecutions for nonviolent offenses."