Biden pardons Congressman Thompson, House Jan. 6th Committee, more on his way out

• Dr. Anthony Fauci and retired General Mark Milley were also among President Biden’s last-minute pardons issued hours before President Trump was to be sworn in.

With President-elect Donald Trump (R) set to take the oath of office at noon, outgoing President Joe Biden (D) issued a flurry of last-minute pardons Monday morning to people he says do not deserve to be the targets of unjustified and politically motivated prosecutions.

Among the pardons are Dr. Anthony Fauci, retired General Mark Milley, and the members of the U.S. House Committee appointed by former Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D) that investigated the January 6, 2021, riot at the U.S. Capitol.

The pardons come after Trump told NBC’s “Meet the Press” host Kristen Welker last month that Mississippi Congressman Bennie Thompson (D), chairman of the committee, and former Wyoming Congresswomen Liz Cheney (R), vice chair of the committee, “should go to jail” for their role on the House Select Committee.

READ MORE: Trump says Thompson, others on House Select Committee “should go to jail”

“For what they did, honestly, they should go to jail,” Trump said, adding, “Biden can give them a pardon if he wants to. And maybe he should. Just remember, unselect committee. A year and a half of sworn testimony, and after getting all of the testimony, they deleted it, wait, and they destroyed almost everything. There’s nothing left. It’s unprecedented.”

Welker asked the President-elect if he would direct the new FBI director and Attorney General to send them jail. Trump said, “No.”

“No, not at all. I think that they’ll have to look at that, but I’m not going to — I’m going to focus on drill, baby, drill,” Trump said.

In his Monday morning pardon announcement, President Biden “American democracy was tested” on January 6, 2021, “when a mob of insurrectionists attacked the Capitol in an attempt to overturn a fair and free election by force and violence.”

“In light of the significance of that day, Congress established the bipartisan Select Committee to Investigate the January 6th Attack on the United States Capitol to investigate and report upon the facts, circumstances, and causes of the insurrection. The Select Committee fulfilled this mission with integrity and a commitment to discovering the truth,” Biden said. “Rather than accept accountability, those who perpetrated the January 6th attack have taken every opportunity to undermine and intimidate those who participated in the Select Committee in an attempt to rewrite history, erase the stain of January 6th for partisan gain, and seek revenge, including by threatening criminal prosecutions.”

While note specifically mentioning the House Committee members by name, Biden said he was pardoning “the Members of Congress and staff who served on the Select Committee, and the U.S. Capitol and D.C. Metropolitan police officers who testified before the Select Committee.”

President Biden went on to note that, “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.”

As for his pardons of Milley and Fauci, Biden touted the retired Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff’s guidance of the Armed Forces “through complex global security threats” and said Fauci “saved countless lives by managing the government’s response to pressing health crises.” While not specifically naming COVID-19, Biden said Fauci “helped the country tackle a once-in-a-century pandemic,” and added, “The United States is safer and healthier because of him.”

Notably, as reported by the Associated Press, the pardons, announced with just hours left in Biden’s presidency, have been the subject of heated debate for months at the highest levels of the White House.

“It’s customary for a president to grant clemency at the end of his term, but those acts of mercy are usually offered to Americans who have been convicted of crimes,” the AP reported. “Biden, a Democrat, has used the power in the broadest and most untested way possible: to pardon those who have not even been investigated. The decision lays the groundwork for an even more expansive use of pardons by Trump, a Republican, and future presidents.”

President Biden also recently awarded the Presidential Citizens Medal, the second-highest civilian honor in the United States, to both Congressman Thompson and former Congresswoman Cheney.

UPDATE:

Mid-morning on Monday, Congressman Thompson and former Congresswoman Cheney released the following statement on the behalf of the Members of the House Select Committee:

“On behalf of the Members of the Select Committee on the January 6th Attack on the United States Capitol, we express our gratitude to President Biden for recognizing that we and our families have been continuously targeted not only with harassment, lies and threats of criminal violence, but also with specific threats of criminal prosecution and imprisonment by members of the incoming administration, simply for doing our jobs and upholding our oaths of office. We have been pardoned today not for breaking the law but for upholding it.

“These are indeed ‘extraordinary circumstances’ when public servants are pardoned to prevent false prosecution by the government for having worked faithfully as Members of Congress to expose the facts of a months-long criminal effort to override the will of the voters after the 2020 elections, including by inciting a violent insurrection to thwart the peaceful transfer of power. Such a prosecution would be ordered and conducted by persons who led this unprecedented attack on our constitutional system. We are not deterred, we have never been deterred, and we will never be deterred by threats of criminal violence or criminal prosecution, and we are encouraged greatly for the future of the rule of law by the existence of the Constitution’s sweeping Speech and Debate Clause as well as this general pardon by President Biden of our Committee and its excellent staff.

“We pray that our institutions will prevail over these coming four years, but their survival will undoubtedly require courage by the citizenry, those in elected office and the press. The truth and the Constitution must prevail.”