Preemptive Pardons - Then and Now
Early in the morning on January 20, 2025, President Joe Biden issued “preemptive pardons” to Dr. Anthony Fauci, General Mark Milley, and many of the January 6 Committee leaders including Liz Cheney and Bennie Thompson. Then, literally minutes before Donald Trump was sworn into office, Biden issued another round of preemptive pardons for his brother Frank, his brother James, James’ wife Sara Biden, his sister Valerie Owens and her husband, John Owens.
James and Hunter Biden were paid millions of dollars by a Chinese energy firm called CEFC to look into securing energy deals in the U.S., which never materialized, while Frank Biden used Joe Biden’s 2021 inauguration to promote his Florida law firm. He was reported to have interrupted business meetings to speak on the phone with “the big guy”.
These last-minute pardons followed Joe Biden’s decision in December to pardon his son Hunter, who was convicted on federal gun and tax charges in 2024, for all crimes he may have committed going back as far as 2014. The pardons for his five other family members also span back to 2014. Hunter Biden’s pardon came after months of repeated denials by the then President that he would pardon his son.
Although, on a human level, one might understand the motivation of a father who wishes to protect his son from imprisonment, the reason given by Joe Biden for reneging on his repeated promise not to pardon Hunter Biden was that he was the victim “of the worst kind of partisan politics.” This, despite the fact that it was Joe Biden’s own Justice Department who oversaw the investigations into Hunter Biden’s wrong doings and that congressional investigators proved that Biden family members and business associates profited from business deals with overseas oligarchs.
Kentucky Rep. James Comer, who led the House impeachment inquiry against Joe Biden, slammed the pardons, saying that he believes the move indicates the Biden family is likely guilty of the corrupt and unsavory activity of which they have been accused.
“President Biden’s preemptive pardons for the Biden Crime Family serve as a confession of their corruption as they sold out the American people to enrich themselves. Our investigation revealed that at least ten members of the Biden Crime Family and their associates raked in over $30 million by selling Joe Biden’s influence to corrupt foreign entities and individuals in China, Russia, Ukraine, Romania, and Kazakhstan,” Comer said. “The American people have seen through the legacy media’s coverup, and the Bidens’ lies, and they know the truth: President Biden abused his public office to create a slush fund for his family.”
Joe Biden insisted that “The issuance of these pardons should not be mistaken as an acknowledgment that they engaged in any wrongdoing, nor should acceptance be misconstrued as an admission of guilt for any offense.”
While whether or not the acceptance of a pardon legally constitutes an admission of guilt by the recipient may be disputed, what is known is that after President Gerald Ford left the White House in 1977, his close friends revealed that Ford justified his pardon of Richard Nixon by carrying in his wallet a portion of the text from a Supreme Court decision from 1915, Burdick v. United States 236 U.S. 79. The text Ford relied upon, delivered by Justice Joseph McKenna, stated that Burdick was entitled to reject an offer of a pardon for a number of reasons, including that a pardon carries an imputation of guilt, and that acceptance carries a confession of guilt.
Meanwhile, President Donald Trump faced scorn from the media and elected leaders after it was reported he was entertaining the idea of preemptive pardons for his own family members and other associates in 2020.
Ultimately, President Trump did not issue pardons for his adult children or anyone else in his orbit, but that did not prevent the news media from lambasting the idea.
CNN’s Jake Tapper reported: "A source tells CNN that President Trump, the outgoing president, is discussing preemptive pardons for people close to him.”
"Is the president now considering pardons for members of the Trump family, including himself?” asked ABC News' David Muir on "World News Tonight."
"Pardoning the presidents kids? Why President Trump and his top allies believe Ivanka, Jared, Don Jr, and Eric, could need what’s being called a preemptive pardon," Norah O'Donnell of "CBS Evening News" said to viewers.
Washington Post columnist Philip Bump asked, "How much protection can Trump offer his family with his pardon power? A lot."
"If you had to build a 2020-time capsule in advance, this is probably something that you would have invented to put into the 2020 time capsule," MSNBC’s Rachel Maddow told viewers.
"The idea of a kind of prospective pardon, this sort of permanent federal Get Out of Jail Free card, that seems to be what we're talking about in the case of this, right?" Maddow's MSNBC colleague Chris Hayes said. “Where does that come from? That concept you can just kind of wave your magic pardon wand?"
The liberal news blog Slate speculated that pardoning his children could make Trump “a bigger criminal target," writing "If Trump were to distribute such broadly worded pardons liberally among his circle, he would make them all subject to subpoena to testify about not only their own conduct, but his."
“Is there an innocent explanation for someone to seek preemptive pardons for family members? Would you do that if you knew you were innocent and just worried about outside forces?” MSNBC host Brian Williams asked former federal prosecutor Andrew Weissmann.
“The answer to that is going to be no,” Weissmann responded. “If you haven’t done anything wrong . . . what do you need a preemptive pardon for?”
"Have you ever heard of somebody getting a preemptive pardon who was innocent of all crime, who's just an innocent person? Have you ever heard of that, just somebody getting a blanket pardon and they're an innocent person?" MSNBC's Joy Reid asked then California Representative (now Senator) Adam Schiff.
"No," Schiff responded. "It's the president's own family. It's people that have been covering up for the President, in addition to his own family."
In a separate interview, CNN’s Wolf Blitzer asked Schiff, "Would you see that… as essentially an admission of guilt?"
"I certainly would view it that way," Schiff told Blitzer. "I think millions of Americans would view it that way. If there was no belief in criminality, why would he think a pardon was necessary?"
After winning the 2020 election, Joe Biden was asked about preemptive pardons during an interview with CNN's Jake Tapper. "Well, it concerns me in terms of what kind of precedent it sets and how the rest of the world looks at us as a nation of laws and justice," Biden told Tapper, adding "you’re not going to see in our administration that kind of approach to pardons."