President Joe Biden should issue preemptive pardons to his political allies and those deemed to be on President-elect Donald Trump’s alleged “enemies list,” Democrats and their media allies believe.
Delivering a preemptive pardon indicates an admission of guilt, although Democrats claim a preemptive pardon would only be intended to block Trump from targeting his political foes.
Democrats and media elites list those deserving a preemptive pardon as Christopher Wray, Justice Department lawyers, Joe Biden (himself), the whole Biden family, Liz Cheney, Mark Milley, Rep. Nancy Pelosi, Adam Kinzinger, among others.
“If it’s clear by January 19th that [revenge] is his intention, then I would recommend to President Biden that he provide those preemptive pardons to people, because that’s really what our country is going to need next year,” Sen. Ed Markey (D-MA) told Boston Public Radio.
“Does it concern me that revenge would be part of her mission? Of course it does,” Sen. Amy Klobuchar (D-MN) told ABC News in late November in relation to Pam Bondi, Trump’s nominee-designate for FBI Director.
Members of the establishment media have been particularly vocal about preemptive pardons. Jill Wine-Banks, a former assistant Watergate special prosecutor, was “relieved and thrilled” Joe Biden pardoned Hunter Biden and encouraged him to issue preemptive pardons to those “threatened by the injustice”
“I hope that President Biden will also issue preemptive pardons to all of those people threatened by the injustice of what will become the Department of Justice in the Trump administration,” she told MSNBC’s Jonathan Capehart. “That, of course, includes Jack Smith and all of his staff, many Department of Justice lawyers.”
“It includes President Biden himself, although we don’t know that anyone can legally pardon themselves,” Wine-Banks continued. “He will need a pardon because he is going to be harassed and charged for no crimes whatsoever. Donald Trump has promised that.”
“People on it [the list] are in danger,” former Justice Department attorney Paul Rosenzweig wrote in the Atlantic about pardons for Trump’s alleged “enemies list,”
“I shudder to think of other possibilities,” he said in reference to Cheney, Milley, Hillary Clinton, Robert Mueller, Rod Rosenstein, and Cassidy Hutchinson.
Joe Biden must act immediately to issue preemptive pardons to “safeguard a lengthening list of people who are on the receiving end of Trump’s threats,” the Daily Beasts’ Eleanor Clift argued:
Trump has threatened many of his adversaries, and he will soon have the power to make good on his threats. President Biden must act and use his pardon power to safeguard a lengthening list of people who are on the receiving end of Trump’s threats. They will say they’ve done nothing wrong, and they’re right. Preemptive pardons are problematic, a get-out-of jail free card when you haven’t committed a crime. But they’re needed now that President-elect Trump is gearing up his revenge tour.
The inflamed rhetoric appears to be a form of fear mongering about Trump’s vow to purge the administrative state.
The term “administrative state” specifically describes the phenomenon of unaccountable and unelected administrative agencies, including the national security apparatus, exercising power to create and enforce their own rules. The administrative state uses its rule-making ability to essentially usurp the separation of powers between the three branches of government by creating a so-called fourth branch of government not formed by the Constitution.
Many unelected bureaucrats within the administrative state also use their position to inflict their own agenda on citizens. For instance, before the “laptop from hell” story broke in 2020, 51 intel officials signed a letter that insinuated Hunter’s laptop was Russian disinformation. The letter was peddled by Politico under the title “Hunter Biden story is Russian disinfo, dozens of former intel officials say.” The 51 signatories, however, seemingly knew the Politico story was false at the time because the FBI had the laptop that Hunter abandoned at a Delaware computer repair shop. President Joe Biden cited the story during a 2020 presidential debate with Trump to discredit the laptop’s contents. The story was reportedly planted by Secretary of State Antony Blinken for Biden to use during the event.
Some bureaucrats in the administrative state appear worried that Trump will replace them with employees who will perform the tasks assigned to them by Trump administration officials. They frame this angst as a concern over Trump politicizing their jobs.
Wendell Husebo is a political reporter with Breitbart News and a former RNC War Room Analyst. He is the author of Politics of Slave Morality. Follow Wendell on “X” @WendellHusebø or on Truth Social @WendellHusebo.