Peter Baker and Erica L. Green
President Biden’s staff is debating whether he should issue blanket pardons for a swath of President-elect Donald J. Trump’s perceived enemies to protect them from the “retribution” he has threatened after he takes office, according to people familiar with the discussion.
The idea would be to pre-emptively extend executive clemency to a list of current and former government officials for any possible crimes over a period of years, effectively short-circuiting the next president’s promised campaign of reprisals.
White House officials do not believe the potential recipients have actually committed crimes, but they have grown increasingly worried that Mr. Trump’s selections for top Justice Department positions indicate that he will follow through on his repeated vows to seek revenge.
Even an investigation that results in no charges could drag on for months or years, costing those people hundreds of thousands of dollars in legal fees and crippling their career prospects.
The discussion of blanket pardons, reported earlier by Politico, remains primarily at a staff level although Mr. Biden has talked about it with senior members of the team, according to the people familiar with the matter, who spoke on condition of anonymity to describe internal deliberations. It comes after Mr. Biden pardoned his son Hunter to spare him from prison on gun and tax charges. The White House declined to comment on Thursday.
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