Former President Joe Biden granted clemency to a select group of individuals in a round of last-minute pardons aimed at shielding allies from potential reprisals by President Donald Trump, but the move is not without complications for the recipients.
Former Wyoming Republican congresswoman and Jan. 6 Committee co-chair Liz Cheney and Dr. Anthony Fauci were among the limited list of pardon recipients, a gesture Biden’s aides say was intended to preempt acts of vengeance by Trump or his administration.
However, legal experts were quick to point out that the pardons would not exempt either individual from having to testify under oath if subpoenaed.
Federal litigation attorney Jesse Binnall pointed out that Biden’s pardons do not shield Cheney and Fauci from consequences if they lie under oath, should the GOP-controlled Congress subpoena them to testify. In his words, the pardons could be “great news” for anyone seeking to see the two prosecuted.
“The pardons are actually great news. No one who was just pardoned will be able to refuse to testify in a civil, criminal, or congressional proceeding based upon the 5th Amendment,” Binnall wrote on X, before dropping another truth bomb.
“And let’s just be realistic. Most of these disgusting individuals would probably have to be charged in Washington, DC, which doesn’t convict partisan leftists,” Binnall, also a former attorney for President Donald Trump, wrote.
Other X users offered a potential solution to the problem of liberal bias in DC, including retired U.S. Army officer, lawyer, and author Kurt Schlichter.
“This is key – the depositions and the actual testimony must take place outside of Washington DC. Washington DC is a biased venue that will not convict Democrats when they commit perjury. Accordingly, take this show on the road,” he wrote.
Others who received pardons were former Joint Chiefs of Staff Chairman and Army Gen. Mark Milley, who later criticized Trump during his first term and al,l other members of the J6 committee.
Former Arizona state legislature candidate Josh Barnett (R) explained in a lengthy post on X that blanket presidential pardons don’t automatically cover every potential wrongdoing.
“A pardon typically grants forgiveness for a specific offense or set of offenses committed before the pardon was issued. However, if someone is found guilty of treason after receiving a pardon for previous crimes, the pardon does not extend to this new offense,” he said, perhaps a reference to Milley, who reportedly contacted his Chinese counterpart in the waning days of Trump’s first term and said he would “warn” him of any pending U.S. attack.
“A pardon only covers the crimes explicitly mentioned or implicitly understood to be covered by the pardon at the time it was granted. If the treason was committed or discovered after the pardon, it would not be protected by that pardon,” he added.
During a recent interview on Fox News, Trump told host Rachel Campos-Duffy that “I can’t even go after” figures from the January 6 investigation because of Biden’s pardons.
“Look the unselect Committee of political thugs–these horrible people–Democrats and two of the worst Republicans in history, crying Adam [Kinzinger] and Liz Cheney, two of the worst. They are just sick people. This was the committee. And it went for a year and a half,” Trump began.
“At the end of a year and a half, what did they do? They destroyed every piece of evidence they had because it came out totally on our side. Nancy Pelosi was responsible for the security. She knew that. She proclaimed it on her daughter’s tape. I mean, her daughter’s a videographer or whatever the hell she does. And she had Nancy complain, you know, saying, yeah, that she was responsible for it. Yes. They burned everything. And then Biden gave them all a pardon. These are congresspeople,” he said.
Trump continued, “These are people that are in Congress, not respected members, but they’re in Congress. If you did that in a civil thing. But think of it, they burned, deleted, and destroyed every single document after a year and a half because like the person that said, I grabbed this massive Secret Service agent around their neck and I was rebuffed. And then I went to the other one, and I think he was like, this big karate guy. And I went over there. And I had friends who say, ‘don’t ever change. It’s so cool.’ You know, I said, ‘no, I just want the truth.’”
“So they work for a year and a half, making everybody’s life miserable. They realized that they were guilty as – you know, all those secret agents, secret service agents, they honestly testified. They testified in a very honest way, and everything was wrong for them. And what, rather than exposing what they did, the criminal acts, they created a criminal act, and they did it like – a really good. But could you imagine if I deleted and destroyed all documents. And this is a hearing, a big deal that was set up that shouldn’t have been allowed to go forward. And, that’s it. So we can’t even go after them because they were pardoned,” Trump argued.
“Now, these–we’re dealing with, with very corrupt people. We have a lot of corrupt people in our government,” he concluded.
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