Joe Biden grants preemptive pardons to several potential targets of his successor, including members of his family

The outgoing American president wishes to protect elected officials or civil servants from “unjustified and politically motivated legal proceedings”.

A precaution that says a lot about the political climate in the United States. A few hours before ceding power to Donald Trump, Joe Biden granted, Monday January 20, a series of preventive pardons to elected officials or civil servants in the Republican’s sights to protect them from “unjustified and politically motivated legal proceedings.” “I believe in the rule of law and I am sure that the solidity of our judicial system will ultimately prevail in the face of political debates. But we live in exceptional circumstances and I cannot, in good conscience, do nothing “he wrote in a press release.

While his Republican successor has sworn to “revenge” of his political adversaries, the 82-year-old Democrat has decided to give his protection to personalities who are also the bugbears of the Trumpists: Donald Trump’s former chief of staff of the armed forces, General Mark Milley; the former architect of the Covid-19 strategy under Trump and Biden, Anthony Fauci; and the elected officials and civil servants who participated in a commission of inquiry into the assault on the Capitol on January 6, 2021, as well as the police officers who testified before this same commission.

A few minutes before the inauguration of his successor, Joe Biden also preemptively pardoned his brother, James Biden, his sister, Valerie Biden Owens, their respective spouses, as well as his brother Francis Biden, as he had done in December for his son, Hunter Biden. The latter, one of the favorite targets of the American hard right, was convicted in two separate cases of illegal possession of a firearm and tax evasion.

“My family has been targeted with relentless attacks and threats, motivated only by the desire to get at me – the worst kind of partisan politics. Unfortunately, I have no reason to think that these attacks will stop.”argued Joe Biden. Never before has the power of presidential pardon been used so extensively in the United States to absolve people who are the subject of potential political prosecution by a successor.

Donald Trump castigated this decision by Joe Biden, who pardoned “people who are very, very guilty of very serious crimes”he denounced to the press just after the first speech of his mandate.