How Biden’s Pardons Normalize Abuse of Power

As expected, Joe Biden handed out 10-year blanket pardons to his corrupt family, which had profited in the millions from influence-peddling schemes.

The venality is breathtaking.

The corruption is one thing. But pardons he gave government officials like Mark Milley, Anthony Fauci, Bennie Thompson, Liz Cheney, and others have created an unprecedented moral hazard that will long outlive Biden.

Ponder the long-term consequences of blanket amnesty for political allies. It’s difficult to imagine anything could incentivize criminality and abuse of power more than knowing a president will simply give you a get-out-of-jail-free card at the end of a term.

Indeed, even if pardoning one’s allies doesn’t become a White House tradition, and it might, a president can simply intimate that forgiveness is coming, sanctioning his minions to abuse their office with impunity.

“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 writes.

Why not? The pardons are either an acknowledgment by Democrats that the Justice Department can easily be weaponized against political foes or, conversely, that these actors behaved in ways that were possibly criminal or corrupt.

And let’s momentarily set aside future effects of the pardons. What about the culpability of those Biden let off the hook? Most of these operatives deserve scrutiny.

Biden contends that the United States “owes these public servants a debt of gratitude for their tireless commitment to our country.” The term “public servant” is one of the most misleading in our vernacular. It insinuates that government officials are sacrificing themselves for the common good when most not only make a great living but are imbued with undeserved power and prestige. The state has gotten so big that we are the ones who end up being servants.

We certainly don’t owe Fauci, the epitome of an abusive mandarin, anything. It is unlikely that any American has ever done more to damage trust in public health.

Fauci released a statement expressing gratitude for Biden’s pardon, noting that the threat of prosecution “creates immeasurable and intolerable distress on me and my family.” Surely, the distress Fauci feels is trivial compared to the anguish experienced by Americans who were barred from attending the funerals of their loved ones, those who had their businesses needlessly decimated, or parents who sat helpless while profound harm was inflicted on their children because of shutdowns.

The federal government is an all-powerful entity that will destroy your life, throw you in prison and shut down your church. Fauci is not solely responsible for what happened, but he steered the ship.

Governors regularly leaned on Fauci’s positions as justification for their unconstitutional shutdowns of churches, economic lockdowns, and school closures. And Fauci praised them for it. It was the most undemocratic exertion of state power over individuals in modern history.

In a real “democracy,” the public would be entitled to know if Fauci, who later admitted that “draconian” COVID-19 policies led to “collateral negative consequences,” had been lying to Congress and presidents. What if I knew there was overwhelming evidence that the virus that causes COVID-19 had originated in China and lied about that as well? These are entirely legitimate issues to investigate.

Like Fauci, Milley was bestowed with an unprecedented pardon “for any offenses against the U.S. which he may have committed or taken part in” from January 2014 to the issuing of the pardon. That’s 10 years. The former chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff says he’s “deeply grateful” for the pardon. I bet he is.

A rank partisan, Milley’s incompetence and dishonesty during the deadly Afghanistan pullout were bad enough. But then he cooked up a counterhistorical fantasy in which Donald Trump would nuke adversaries to save his White House bid. This, he thinks, justified making two calls to Chinese communist generals, promising to give them a heads-up should the commander in chief of the U.S. Army attack — an unambiguous and possibly treasonous subversion of the Constitution and civilian authority over the military.

In the end, Trump has far more significant reason to fear retribution than Biden. The Democratic-run Justice Department had already tried to destroy the lives of his lawyers. It launched an unprecedented round of lawfare that was meant to put him in prison. Trump, incidentally, despite concerns at the time, didn’t preemptively pardon everyone in his administration and family in 2021. Why wouldn’t he do it next time?

If not Trump, what about whoever comes next? History consistently shows us that every morsel of power taken by one leader is likely to be used by another. Thanks, Joe.

David Harsanyi is a senior writer at the Washington Examiner. Harsanyi is a nationally syndicated columnist and author of five books — the most recent, “The Rise of Blue Anon,” available now. His work has appeared in National Review, the Wall Street Journal, Washington Post, Reason, New York Post and numerous other publications. Follow him on X @davidharsanyi.
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