WASHINGTON — President Joe Biden on Monday pardoned Dr. Anthony Fauci, retired Gen. Mark Milley and members of the House committee that investigated the Jan. 6 attack on the Capitol, in an extraordinary use of the powers of the presidency in his final hours to guard against potential “revenge” by the incoming Trump administration.

The decision by Biden comes after Donald Trump warned of an enemies list filled with those who have crossed him politically or sought to hold him accountable for his attempt to overturn his 2020 election loss and his role in the storming of the U.S. Capitol on Jan. 6, 2021. Trump has selected Cabinet nominees who backed his election lies and who have pledged to punish those involved in efforts to investigate him.

“The issuance of these pardons should not be mistaken as an acknowledgment that any individual engaged in any wrongdoing, nor should acceptance be misconstrued as an admission of guilt for any offense,” Biden said in a statement. “Our nation owes these public servants a debt of gratitude for their tireless commitment to our country.”

The pardons, announced with just hours left in Biden’s presidency, have been the subject of heated debate for months at the highest levels of the White House. It’s customary for a president to grant clemency at the end of his term, but those acts of mercy are usually offered to Americans who have been convicted of crimes.

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Trump Says Pardons are Disgraceful

Trump told NBC the pardons were disgraceful.

Biden, a Democrat, has used the power in the broadest and most untested way possible: to pardon those who have not even been investigated. His decision lays the groundwork for an even more expansive use of pardons by Trump, a Republican, and future presidents.

While the Supreme Court last year ruled that presidents enjoy broad immunity from prosecution for what could be considered official acts, the president’s aides and allies enjoy no such shield. There is concern that future presidents could use the promise of a blanket pardon to encourage allies to take actions they might otherwise resist for fear of running afoul of the law.

It’s unclear whether those pardoned by Biden would need to apply for the clemency, and acceptance could be seen as a tacit admission of guilt or wrongdoing, validating years of attacks by Trump and his supporters, even though those who have been pardoned have not been formally accused of any crimes.

“These are exceptional circumstances, and I cannot in good conscience do nothing,” Biden said, adding that “Even when individuals have done nothing wrong — and in fact have done the right thing — and will ultimately be exonerated, the mere fact of being investigated or prosecuted can irreparably damage reputations and finances.”

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Fauci Worked Under Trump During COVID

Fauci was director of the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases at the National Institutes of Health for nearly 40 years, including during Trump’s term in office, and later served as Biden’s chief medical adviser until his retirement in 2022. He helped coordinate the nation’s response to the COVID-19 pandemic and raised Trump’s ire when he resisted Trump’s untested public health notions. Fauci has since become a target of intense hatred and vitriol from people on the right, who blame him for mask mandates and other policies they believe infringed on their rights, even as hundreds of thousands of people were dying.

“Despite the accomplishments that my colleagues and I achieved over my long career of public service, I have been the subject of politically-motivated threats of investigation and prosecution,” Fauci said in a statement. “There is absolutely no basis for these threats. Let me be perfectly clear: I have committed no crime.”

Milley, a former chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, has called Trump a fascist and has detailed Trump’s conduct around the deadly Jan. 6 insurrection. He said he was grateful to Biden for a pardon.

“I do not wish to spend whatever remaining time the Lord grants me fighting those who unjustly might seek retribution for perceived slights,” he said in a statement. “I do not want to put my family, my friends, and those with whom I served through the resulting distraction, expense, and anxiety.”

Biden also extended pardons to members and staff of the Jan. 6 committee that investigated the attack, as well as the U.S. Capitol and D.C. Metropolitan police officers who testified before the House committee about their experiences that day, overrun by an angry, violent mob of Trump supporters.

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Jan. 6 Committee Spent 18 Months Investigating Trump

The committee spent 18 months investigating Trump and the insurrection. It was led by Rep. Bennie Thompson, D-Miss., and Rep. Liz Cheney, a Wyoming Republican who later pledged to vote for Democrat Kamala Harris and campaigned with her against Trump. The committee’s final report found that Trump criminally engaged in a “multi-part conspiracy” to overturn the lawful results of the 2020 presidential election and failed to act to stop his supporters from attacking the Capitol.

“Rather than accept accountability,” Biden said, “those who perpetrated the January 6th attack have taken every opportunity to undermine and intimidate those who participated in the Select Committee in an attempt to rewrite history, erase the stain of January 6th for partisan gain, and seek revenge, including by threatening criminal prosecutions.”

Biden’s statement did not list the dozens of members and staff by name. Some did not know they were to receive pardons until it happened, according to a person familiar with the matter who spoke to The Associated Press on the condition of anonymity.

Cheney and Thompson said in a statement on behalf of the committee that they were grateful for the decision, saying they were being pardoned “not for breaking the law but for upholding it.”

“These are indeed ‘extraordinary circumstances’ when public servants are pardoned to prevent false prosecution by the government for having worked faithfully as members of Congress to expose the facts of a months long criminal effort to override the will of the voters after the 2020 election, including by inciting a violent insurrection,” the said in the statement.

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Pardons May Not Fully Shield Lawmakers, Staff

The extent of the legal protection offered by the pardons may not fully shield the lawmakers or their staff from other types of inquiries, particularly from Congress. Republicans on Capitol Hill would still likely have wide leverage to probe the committee’s actions, as the House GOP did in the last session of Congress, seeking testimony and other materials from those involved.

Biden, an institutionalist, has promised a smooth transition to the next administration, inviting Trump to the White House and saying that the nation will be OK, even as he warned during his farewell address of a growing oligarchy. He has spent years warning that Trump’s ascension to the presidency again would be a threat to democracy. His decision to break with political norms was brought on by those concerns.

Biden has set the presidential record for most individual pardons and commutations issued. He also pardoned his son Hunter.

He is not the first to consider such preemptive pardons. Trump aides considered them for Trump and his supporters involved in his failed efforts to overturn the 2020 presidential election that culminated in the violent riot at the Capitol. But Trump’s pardons never materialized before he left office four years ago.

President Gerald Ford granted a “full, free, and absolute pardon” in 1974 to his predecessor, Richard Nixon, over the Watergate scandal.

Trump, who takes office at noon, has promised to grant swift clemency to many of those involved in the violent and bloody Jan. 6, 2021, attack, which injured roughly 140 law enforcement officers. “Everybody in this very large arena will be very happy with my decision,” he said at a Sunday rally.