President Biden’s aides are considering recommending pardons for prominent anti-Trump officials ahead of the inauguration on January 20, according to a new report from Politico. Mr. Biden said in a statement Sunday that what motivated him to pardon his own son was that he believed the Department of Justice had already unfairly come after his family. 

According to Politico’s Jonathan Martin, Mr. Biden’s aides believe it may be necessary to issue pardons for anti-Trump figures like Congresswoman Liz Cheney, Senator-elect Adam Schiff, and Dr. Anthony Fauci, who served as the pandemic response coordinator for both Trump and Mr. Biden. 

All three figures have drawn the intense ire of Trump and his allies over the course of the last several years, with Ms. Cheney being accused of breaking the law in the course of the January 6 congressional investigation and Mr. Schiff being accused of breaking the law during the first impeachment inquiry into the 45th president. 

Trump had said both Ms. Cheney and Mr. Schiff — along with all other colleagues who participated in the January 6 probe — should be prosecuted. 

Several congressional Republicans have called for Dr. Fauci to be investigated following lockdown restrictions during the pandemic, and other policies that pushed for widespread vaccinations in 2021 and 2022. 

The president himself is currently on a multi-day trip in Angola, which is where he jetted off to just hours after his son received his own blanket pardon that covers “any and all” crimes that may have been committed between the beginning of 2014 and the end of December 1, 2024. 

According to Politico, the staff-level discussions about the pardons are mostly being conducted between White House counsel Ed Siskel and White House chief of staff Jeff Zients. Their fears of Trump’s nominee for FBI director, Kash Patel — who has already won the support of a critical upper chamber lawmaker in Senator Tillis — is driving the debate about whether or not to recommend those pardons. 

The other side of the coin is that Trump may use such blanket pardons to argue that the justice system is corrupt, and that his argument for more aggressive prosecutions would be bolstered in the public eye. There is also the possibility that those who are offered pardons turn them down.