During his last hours in office, former President Joe Biden pardoned members of his family, the Jan. 6 Select Committee, former Joint Chief of Staff Chair Mark Milley and Dr. Anthony Fauci, who helped lead the U.S. government response to the Covid-19 pandemic, setting off a political firestorm across Washington.
Biden — who earlier pardoned his son, Hunter Biden, following his federal criminal convictions of gun and tax charges — issued pardons to his brother James Biden; Sarah Jones Biden, his sister-in-law; Valerie Biden Owens, his sister, and her husband John Owens; and Francis Biden, another brother.
In a statement, Biden said he feared that Republicans would target his family after his departure from the White House.
“My family has been subjected to unrelenting attacks and threats, motivated solely by a desire to hurt me – the worst kind of partisan politics,” Biden said. “Unfortunately, I have no reason to believe these attacks will end….”
More Biden:
Biden’s pardons for the Jan. 6 Select Committee covered members, staff and U.S. Capitol Police and Metropolitan Police officers who testified before the panel. We scooped last week that this was under discussion.
“I believe in the rule of law, and I am optimistic that the strength of our legal institutions will ultimately prevail over politics,” Biden said. “But these are exceptional circumstances, and I cannot in good conscience do nothing.”
Rep. Bennie Thompson (D-Miss.) and former Rep. Liz Cheney (R-Wyo.), the chair and vice chair of the J6 panel, issued a statement for all the committee members. Thompson and Cheney noted that J6 committee members have faced “specific threats of criminal prosecution and imprisonment by members of the incoming administration, simply for doing our jobs and upholding our oaths of office.”
President Donald Trump — long critical of the Jan. 6 committee — bashed Biden for his actions. Trump has said he plans to pardon the “Jan. 6 hostages” who went to federal prison for their role in the attack on the Capitol.
Trump falsely claimed that the select committee “destroyed and eliminated” evidence from the investigation that would have exonerated him. He also bashed former Speaker Nancy Pelosi, claiming that she somehow wanted Trump supporters to attack the Capitol that bloody day.
House Oversight Committee Chair James Comer (R-Ky.), who spent a huge chunk of the last Congress investigating Biden’s family — especially Hunter and James Biden — said the outgoing president’s actions proved that the family was guilty of something and needed to be protected from further scrutiny.
“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,” Comer said.
Republicans may seek to still call those who received Biden pardons to testify, although some of them — Fauci, for instance — have already done so since they left office.
Rep. Barry Loudermilk (R-Ga.), the chair of a House Administration subcommittee, plans to continue his investigation of the select committee and has Speaker Mike Johnson’s full support in doing so. “In light of these perceived admissions of wrongdoing, it is imperative that this investigation continue to expose the truth to the American people,” he said in a statement.
We’ll note, as well, that House Republicans ignored subpoenas from the Jan. 6 Select Committee, so we expect that any sitting Democratic lawmakers will do the same. Ditto Sen. Adam Schiff (D-Calif.).
Cheney and former Rep. Adam Kinzinger (R-Ill.) are no longer in office. Neither are former Reps. Stephanie Murphy (D-Fla.) and Elaine Luria (D
