Reactions to Biden's Last Minute Pardons of His Family

AP Photo/Haraz N. Ghanbari, File

This morning Joe Biden issued blanket pardons to Anthony Fauci, Mark Milley and members of the House J6 Committee. However, that was not the end of it. Just as the inauguration ceremony was getting started, we learned that he had also issued a final round of preemptive pardons for members of his own family.

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Biden issued a statement explaining his decision.

“My family has been subjected to unrelenting attacks and threats, motivated solely by a desire to hurt me — the worst kind of partisan politics,” he said in his last statement as president. “Unfortunately, I have no reason to believe these attacks will end.”

Mr. Biden’s action pardoned James B. Biden, his brother; Sara Jones Biden, James’s wife; Valerie Biden Owens, Mr. Biden’s sister; John T. Owens, Ms. Owens’s husband; and Francis W. Biden, Mr. Biden’s brother.

The White House announced the pardons with less than 20 minutes left in Mr. Biden’s presidency, after he had already walked into the Capitol Rotunda to witness the swearing-in of Mr. Trump before leaving the Capitol for the last time as president.

The media is, of course, treating this very differently than when Trump pardoned people connected to his administration.

There were reactions from people right, left and center suggesting these last minute pardons undermine Biden's claims about the importance of norms and his trust in the system.

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Whatever happened to Joe Biden restoring and protecting norms?

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The White House has been hinting for weeks that some last minute pardons were happening, but the decision to wait until the inauguration was underway to annouce this is impossible to explain apart from an obvious desire to hide this until Biden was off the public stage.

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