President Joe Biden pardoned Dr. Anthony Fauci, General Mark Milley, and the lawmakers and staff who served on the January 6 committee on Monday during his final hours in office before President-elect Donald Trump reenters the White House.
The outgoing president issued the last-minute pardons to prevent his successor from enacting retribution against his political opponents.
“Baseless and politically motivated investigations wreak havoc on the lives, safety, and financial security of targeted individuals and their families,” Biden said in a statement Monday morning.
The preemptive pardons are unprecedented because they shield many of the president-elect’s top enemies from criminal prosecution before they have even been investigated, though Biden insisted the pardons shouldn’t be taken to imply guilt on the part of the recipients.
“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,” he added. “Our nation owes these public servants a debt of gratitude for their tireless commitment to our country.”
The January 6 committee was lambasted by House Republicans for pursuing a politically motivated investigation of Trump’s actions on the day that Congress certified Biden’s 2020 election win. The panel was largely led by Democrats, with then-Representatives Liz Cheney and Adam Kinzinger as the only two Republican members.
The House Administration Committee’s oversight subcommittee released a report last year, seeking to undermine the January 6 committee and its star witness, White House aide Cassidy Hutchinson, whose dramatic account of Trump’s actions were contradicted by other witnesses.
Biden also pardoned the U.S. Capitol and D.C. Metropolitan police officers who testified before the January 6 committee.
Fauci, the former director of the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases and former chief medical adviser to the president, has been criticized by Republican lawmakers over his role in instituting COVID-19 lockdowns and masking measures in 2020.
Testifying under oath before Congress on multiple occasions, Fauci insisted that the NIH had not funded gain-of-function research of the kind conducted in Wuhan, China, where the Covid pandemic emerged. Internal documents revealed that the agency had in fact funded research at the Wuhan lab designed to make viruses more transmissible, efforts that fit the traditional definition of gain-of-function research.
One of his fiercest critics, Senator Rand Paul (R., Ky.), repeatedly grilled Fauci on Capitol Hill and argued the doctor lied to Congress about the Wuhan lab funding. Paul has urged the Justice Department to prosecute Fauci for perjury.
Fauci retired at the end of 2022 and largely remains out of the public spotlight, although he testified before the Select Subcommittee on the Coronavirus Pandemic last year. There, he defended his decision-making during the pandemic and said he had kept an “open mind” about the origins of Covid-19.
In a statement released Friday, Fauci said he appreciated Biden’s pardon but insisted he had done nothing wrong.
Paul felt differently, saying Biden’s pardon of Fauci “forever seals the deal” on “who bears responsibility” for the pandemic and vowing he “will not rest” until the “coverup” is exposed.
“Fauci’s pardon will only serve as an accelerant to pierce the veil of deception,” Paul posted on X. “Ignominious! Anthony Fauci will go down in history as the first government scientist to be preemptively pardoned for a crime.”
Milley, the former chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, called Trump a “total fascist” the month before the November election and said the then-GOP nominee was the “most dangerous person to this country.” Their feud began years ago.
The retired general drew the ire of Trump after he didn’t back the then-president following January 6. He also faced heated criticism from GOP congressmen after he dismissed conservatives’ concerns that teaching critical race theory in the U.S. military is “woke.”
“I want to understand white rage, and I’m white,” Milley said in 2021, noting that the crowd that partook in the January 6 Capitol riot was mostly white.
“What is it that caused thousands of people to assault this building and try to overturn the Constitution of the United States of America?” he added. “What is wrong with having some situational understanding about the country we are here to defend?”
Responding to Biden’s pardon, Milley said he was grateful now that he no longer has to worry about “retribution” from Trump or his allies.
Biden set the presidential record for most individual’s pardons and commutations. On Friday, he reduced the sentences of nearly 2,500 people convicted of nonviolent drug offenses. And last month, he converted the sentences of 37 of the 40 men on federal death row to life imprisonment without the possibility of parole. Trump vowed to “vigorously pursue the death penalty” following Biden’s commutations.
David Zimmermann is a news writer for National Review. Originally from New Jersey, he is a graduate of Grove City College and currently writes from Washington, D.C. His writing has appeared in the Washington Examiner, the Western Journal, Upward News, and the College Fix.
Reprinted with permission from National Review – By Davis Zimmermann
The opinions expressed by columnists are their own and do not necessarily represent the views of AMAC or AMAC Action.
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