His presidency was just an hour old when Donald Trump excoriated Joe Biden for pardoning GOP officials who investigated the Jan. 6, 2021, Capitol riots—and promised retribution, in the form of salvation.
“I was going to talk about the J6 hostages, but you’ll be happy because, you know, it’s action, not words that count, and you’re going to see a lot of action on the J6 hostages,” Trump said during a rambling post-inaugural speech that showed his lingering resentment over the 2020 election results.
“I was going to talk about the things that Joe did today with the pardons of people that were very, very guilty of very bad crimes, like the unselect committee of political folks,” he added, referring to the bipartisan Jan. 6 panel.
Biden’s pardons also applied to former Joint Chiefs of Staff Chairman Mark Milley, who famously called Trump a “total fascist.”
“Why are we doing this? Why are we trying to help a guy like Milley?” Trump said Monday at the Capitol.
But Liz Cheney’s pardon seemed even more infuriating to the new president, who is returning to the White House after a four-year hiatus following his 2020 loss to Biden.
“Why are we helping Liz Cheney?” he asked. “I mean, Liz Cheney is a disaster. She’s a crying lunatic and crying, crying.”
And he called Jan. 6 member Adam Kinzinger, the former GOP congressman who joined Cheney in taking on their own party’s president, a “super crime.”
Shortly before his peaceful transfer of power to Trump, Biden said, “These public servants have served our nation with honor and distinction and do not deserve to be the targets of unjustified and politically motivated prosecutions.”
But Republicans says the pardons signal an admission of guilt and that the investigation was corrupt.
“Proves they know she’s guilty,” Sen. Jim Banks (R-IN) told the Daily Beast, referring to Cheney, who was among a rash of officials who received a pardon from Biden on his way out of office Monday morning.
The preemptive pardons look to shield Trump’s foes from potential future prosecution, and can’t be undone by the new administration. But Trump allies have repeatedly taken aim at the investigation led by Rep. Bennie Thompson (D-MS) and Cheney.
“Joe Biden’s last-minute pardons of the January 6th sham committee members will forever seal the negative legacy of the Biden administration which will be will be one of corruption, pay to play schemes, and the overall total sellout of our ‘American principles,’” Rep. Ralph Norman (R-SC) told the Daily Beast.
Rep. Barry Loudermilk (R-GA), who led the GOP counter-probe into the Jan. 6 committee, called the Monday morning pardons a “direct result of our investigation.”
And Rep. Eli Crane (R-AZ) agreed, drawing attention to what he called the “unlawful, deceitful and corrupt” behavior by those pardoned.
Soon after Biden issued the pardons, Trump texted NBC’s Kristen Welker: “It is disgraceful. Many are guilty of MAJOR CRIMES! DJT.”
The committee members shot back at Republicans’ accusations, claiming they’ve faced “harassment, lies and threats of criminal violence” in addition to threats of imprisonment for “simply for doing our jobs.”
“We have been pardoned today not for breaking the law but for upholding it,” they said in a joint statement, arguing the pardons were necessary to provide protection against “false prosecution” for their work exposing what they termed “a months-long criminal effort to override the will of the voters.”
In addition to pardoning Milley and members and staff of the Jan. 6 select committee, Biden also issued pardons for Dr. Anthony Fauci, who led the response on the COVID-19 pandemic.
