Can you pardon someone who has never been charged with a crime? We may be about to find that out.
On Friday, Breitbart reported the following:
White House lawyers are studying preemptive pardons that President Joe Biden has discussed with senior aides, according to multiple establishment media reports.
Democrat and media allies have urged Biden in the last several weeks to pardon many of his comrades, including Mark Milley, Christopher Wray, Justice Department lawyers, Joe Biden himself, the whole Biden family, Liz Cheney, Mark Milley, Rep. Nancy Pelosi, and Adam Kinzinger, among others.
All of these people tried to disrupt the first Trump administration. Some of them committed crimes in the process–destroying evidence, illegal contact with foreign leaders, lying before Congress (is that a crime?), blocking investigations, etc. Although it would be nice to see some of them held accountable for their crimes, I think there are probably more important things for the new Trump administration to do. Some of those things are cutting federal spending, de-politicization of the Justice Department, securing our border, reestablishing energy independence, and restoring America’s position on the world state. Those priorities are an indication of the size of the mess the Biden administration has created in the past four years.
According to CBS News:
Among those who could be eligible for preemptive legal relief include well-known names at the center of many of the most rancorous moments of the first Trump administration, many of whom remain the subject of his public ire.
The list includes Dr. Anthony Fauci, who helped coordinate the nation’s COVID-19 response and later served as Mr. Biden’s top science adviser; retired Gen. Mark A. Milley, former chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, who has called Trump a “fascist” and provided information for several books and news reports detailing the former president’s behavior and activities around the Jan. 6, 2021 insurrection at the U.S. Capitol; California Democratic Senator-elect Adam Schiff, and other Democratic and Republican lawmakers who led the two impeachment cases against Trump or sat on the House committee that reviewed the Jan. 6 attack — a group that includes former Wyoming Republican congresswoman Liz Cheney, who actively campaigned against Trump this past fall.
Fauci, Milley and Cheney were not immediately available for comment. In an interview with NPR in late November, Schiff said he didn’t think a preemptive pardon is a good idea, because “I think the courts are strong enough to withstand” threats made by Trump.
Just because they may belong in jail does not mean it would be constructive to put them there.