WASHINGTON (AP) — President Joe Biden said Friday he is still considering pardoning people who have been criticized or threatened by President-elect Donald Trump.
Speaking to reporters at the White House, Biden said he and his aides were paying close attention to Trump and his allies’ rhetoric about his political opponents and those involved in his various criminal and civil misery.
“It depends on the language and expectations that Trump has broadcast here over the last few days about what he’s going to do,” Biden said. “The idea that he would punish people for not adhering to what he thinks should be policy-related. for his well-being is simply outrageous.”
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Biden has just 10 days left in office, and the institutionalist has used his dwindling days in office to restore some of the transition norms broken by his predecessor-turned-successor. But granting preemptive pardons — for actual or imagined transgressions by Trump’s critics that could be investigated or prosecuted by the new administration — would expand the powers of the presidency in untested ways.
Trump’s frequent targets include Republican Liz Cheney, the former Wyoming congresswoman, and Representative Bennie Thompson, a Democrat from Mississippi. They helped lead the House of Representatives committee investigating the Jan. 6, 2021, insurrection at the U.S. Capitol by Trump supporters. He has particularly criticized special counsel Jack Smith, who blamed Trump for his efforts to overturn the 2020 election.
Biden, who Trump has said should be jailed, scoffed at the idea of pardoning himself. “What would I forgive myself for?” he asked incredulously. ‘No, I don’t feel like forgiving myself for anything. I didn’t do anything wrong.”
Former Rep. Adam Kinzinger, one of the Republican members of the House committee investigating the Jan. 6 insurrection at the Capitol, rejected the prospect of a Biden pardon in an appearance on CNN earlier this week.
“I understand the theory behind it because Donald Trump has clearly said he’s going after everyone,” he said. “But once you ask for a pardon and it looks like you’re guilty of something, I’m not guilty of anything except bringing the truth to the American people and thereby embarrassing Donald Trump.”
In his remarks to reporters, Biden said a decision by social media giant Meta to end fact-checking on Facebook was “truly shameful” and called it “contrary to American justice.”
The move to replace third-party fact-checking with user-written “community notes,” similar to those on Trump backer Elon Musk’s social platform . It comes on the fourth anniversary of Zuckerberg banning Trump from his platforms after the insurrection.
Biden added: “You think it doesn’t matter that they get it printed? Where millions of people read it, things that are simply not true. I mean, I don’t know what that’s all about. It’s just completely at odds with everything America has to offer. We want to tell the truth.”
