In the final hours of his presidency, President Joe Biden was sure to hand out pardons to his political allies.
Some of those who were pardoned, such as Ravidath Ragbir and Kemba Pradia, were the usual sorts of people who get pardons: mid-level activists and party boosters who successfully appealed to the outgoing administration for some last-minute favors. Such pardons are for people who were actually convicted of crimes in the past. That is, the pardons were not preemptive.
What is notable about this round of new pardons, however, is how many of them are for federal bureaucrats or officials who are deeply enmeshed in the federal government at the highest levels of power. Those who did not directly hold such positions were family members of the now-former president. Moreover, all of these pardons for high-ranking personnel and their family members were preemptive pardons granting blanket immunity to friends of the Biden faction of the regime.
Specifically, Biden granted preemptive pardons to Anthony Fauci, General Mark Milley, James Biden, Sara Biden, Valerie Biden Owens, John Owens, and Francis Biden. The list also includes all the members of the January 6 committee plus committee staff, and the Capitol police officers who testified before the select committee.
In short, these pardons are designed to provide legal immunity for Biden loyalists within the ruling class—and their toadies, such as the Capitol police—in case the voters get uppity. That is, with Trump owing his election to certain populist elements of the electorate, some of those voters might be able to successfully demand prosecution of those who are especially hated by Trump voters.
For example, Anthony Fauci had spent years perjuring himself before Congress, and using his influence within Washington to silence critics and obstruct investigations into the source of covid-19. Fauci, one of the most highly-paid government technocrats in history, had miscalculated. Although Trump lavishly rewarded Fauci with new powers during the first Trump term, Fauci nonetheless allied himself with the Biden-backed deep state. With Trump’s election, Fauci possibly faced a number of investigations into his activities, many of which were probably federal crimes. Many of Trump’s voters had never forgiven Fauci for his totalitarian schemes like “zero covid” and mask mandates, all of which was based on half-baked pseudoscience. So, how to avoid having to answer to the voters? The answer was simple: have Biden issue a blanket preemptive pardon.
The members of the January 6 committee are especially egregious cases. These people, such as Liz Cheney and Adam Schiff, spent years in a witch hunt against working-class grandmothers and fathers, ridiculously portraying the leaderless riot of January 6 as some kind of coup or insurrection. After years of demanding draconian sentences for the ordinary taxpayers who dared set foot in the regime’s sacred buildings on that day, Schiff, Cheney, et al, were apparently begging Biden for pardons and immunity.
We should get used to this sort of thing, regardless of who is in power. Trump’s supporters would have us believe that the use of pardons to protect regime friends is unique to Biden. It’s not. It is true that Biden’s free and easy use of pardons for his pals in recent months is an acceleration of a trend. But Biden hardly invented the idea. After all, Gerald Ford granted a preemptive pardon for Nixon, ensuring that no investigators dug too deep into the activities of the American national security state. But that’s just the most notable case.
Trump himself issued several pardons for criminal servants of the regime. For example, Trump pardoned four American mercenaries for various violent crimes in 2020. Three were convicted of manslaughter and one was convicted of first-degree murder. All four had opened fire on innocent men, women, and children in Iraq, killing fourteen of them. These well-paid regime operatives did their murdering in the service of the US government. So, Trump pardoned them.
Another notable case is Trump’s pardon of Lewis “Scooter” Libby in 2018. Libby was the chief of staff for Vice President Dick Cheney and Libby had been convicted of obstruction of justice and perjury in the Plame affair. Libby was likely involved in leaking federal secrets in an effort to punish a federal intelligence agent for criticizing the Bush administration. Libby’s sentence had already been commuted by George W. Bush years earlier, but President Trump pardoned Libby to wipe his legal slate clean. Libby, after all, was a dutiful servant of the federal intelligence apparatus—the same one that Trump now calls upon to be more active in spying on Americans.
The recent frenzy of pardons is an important reminder that there is no such thing as the so-called “rule of law” in the United States. There is one set of rules for people who win the favor of the regime. There is another set of rules for those who pay for everything. In practice, of course, those at the top are usually able to prevent their friends and allies form being prosecuted at all. With the expansion of abusive pardon powers, however, it is even easier to ensure that the regime’s friends never need pay the price for their crimes. The state will protect its own.
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