In the final hours of his presidency, former President Joe Biden issued preemptive pardons for members and staff of the bipartisan Jan. 6 Select Committee that investigated the attack on the U.S. Capitol four years ago.
The pardons extended to the capitol police officers who testified, along with officials who served under President Donald Trump but became vocal critics, including retired Gen. Mark Milley, who served as Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, and Dr. Anthony Fauci, former Chief Medical Advisor to the president.
Biden said in a statement issued hours before turning power over to Trump that the preemptive pardons were needed to prevent "unjustified and politically motivated prosecutions."
"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 the statement.
Also on that pardon list is Rep. Jamie Raskin, D-Md., who serves as the top Democrat on the House Oversight Committee and was a member of the Jan. 6 Select Committee. Hours before Trump's inauguration, he joined Morning Edition and said he is grappling with the news of his pardon.
"It's a sign of our strange times that public officials and public servants have to be pardoned just for doing their jobs and upholding their oath of office and upholding the law," Raskin said.
NPR's Leila Fadel spoke to Raskin about whether he would accept his pardon and what the next four years will look like in Congress.
This interview has been edited for clarity and length.
Leila Fadel: Have you made the decision on whether to accept [the pardon] or not?
Rep. Jamie Raskin: Well, I don't even know whether that's a choice, and I'm going to consult lawyers about that. It's not clear to me that a pardon is something you reject or you accept. I think it is a statement of the law, but I'm just not sure.
Fadel: Well, I'm asking because in the past, we'd heard Sen. Adam Schiff, a member of your party, say that these pardons would set the wrong precedent. Former Republican Congressman Adam Kinzinger, who was on the select committee with you, said he didn't want and wouldn't accept a pardon. He said taking the pardon would make a person look guilty of something.
Did the president overstep with these pardons?
Raskin: Obviously, it's a strange thing for pardons to be issued for people who've just done their job and have not committed any offense or wrongdoing.
On the other hand, President Trump has been making very explicit threats against the chair of our committee, Bennie Thompson, and against Liz Cheney, the vice chair of our committee. I think we have a lot of protection from the speech and debate clause against prosecution. But, I can see people being of mixed mind about whether or not a pardon helps.
The key thing for me is that going forward, we are going to be able to stand up strong for the Constitution, for the rule of law and defend the rights of the people. And so to the extent that it removes that distraction, then I think, it seems fine. But to me, given that the speech and debate clause already immunizes us against federal and state prosecution as well as civil lawsuits for our work as legislators, it doesn't seem to me to be that big a deal.
Fadel: I spoke to Congressman Byron Donalds earlier, a representative from Florida in the House, and he, like other Republicans, said he was really concerned. Here's what he said about the pardons…
Donalds on Morning Edition: What this really demonstrates is the fact that they knew that they were doing things that were wrong, number one. You're not allowed to destroy evidence in a congressional hearing. That is against federal law. So, by Joe Biden providing these pardons to those staffers and, frankly, the members of those committees, he, once again, is subverting the law.
Fadel: What's your reaction to that and that insinuation?
Raskin: It's absolutely absurd. We destroyed no evidence. And all of the evidence from all of our committees is available to everybody online, and nobody has laid a glove on the report of the Jan. 6 committee. It's a more than 800-page report, and nobody has contradicted a single factual conclusion that our bipartisan committee produced. So, I imagine it's absurd rhetoric like that that impelled the president to make his decision.
We have got to move on from this. There was an attempted violent insurrection against the government in an attempt to overthrow a presidential election. Our committee report definitively and exhaustively reported on everything that happened.
Fadel: The new administration comes in today. The Republicans control the House by a thin minority, [they] also control the Senate. How do you see Democrats' role in this moment and how do you find common ground with Republicans?
Raskin: The Republicans have the slenderest majority in the House in many decades. It's going to end up being 217 to 215, which means they can afford to lose only one vote. And I think they've already effectively lost several at least as guaranteed votes for what they want to do.
I think it's a time of a lot of ideological fluidity and complexity on the right-wing in America.
On the Judiciary Committee, where I'm now the ranking member, I'm hopeful that Chairman Jim Jordan and I can work together again on reviving the PRESS Act, which was legislation to protect reporters against compulsory production of their confidential sources and notes. We sponsored that together. It passed unanimously in the committee and in the House. It faltered in the Senate. But I'm hoping we get that through.
Look, Donald Trump is very proud of the fact that he won not just in the Electoral College, but in the popular vote by more than 3 million votes. I know Joe Biden was proud that he won by more than 7 million votes when he beat Trump four years ago. Why don't we use this as an opportunity to move to a national popular vote for president? Let's get rid of the Electoral College, which is an accident waiting to happen all the time.
There are lots of things we could do working together over the next few years.
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