Biden Preemptive Pardons: Fauci, Milley, and Family Members

On his last two days in office, President Joe Biden issued a sweeping set of Biden preemptive pardons covering people who had not been charged with any crime. The January 19 and 20, 2025, grants shielded two prominent former officials, the entire House Select Committee that investigated the January 6 Capitol attack, and five members of Biden’s own family. Biden said he was protecting them from what he described as politically motivated prosecutions by the incoming Trump administration.

Who Biden Pardoned

The pardons fell into three groups.

Anthony Fauci and Mark Milley

Dr. Anthony Fauci received a full and unconditional pardon for any offenses related to his roles at the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases, the White House Coronavirus Task Force, and as Chief Medical Advisor to the President. Retired General Mark Milley, former chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, received a pardon covering offenses arising from his service as Army Chief of Staff or Joint Chiefs chairman.¹ Both pardons ran from January 1, 2014, through January 19, 2025, and were described as “full and unconditional.”²

The January 6 Select Committee

A single collective pardon covered everyone who served on or worked for the House Select Committee to Investigate the January 6th Attack on the United States Capitol, along with U.S. Capitol Police and D.C. Metropolitan Police officers who testified before the panel. It applied to any offenses “arising from or related to the activities or subject matter” of the committee.¹

The nine committee members were Chairman Bennie Thompson, Vice Chair Liz Cheney, Adam Kinzinger, Adam Schiff, Jamie Raskin, Zoe Lofgren, Pete Aguilar, Elaine Luria, and Stephanie Murphy. Officers covered included Harry Dunn, Aquilino Gonell, Michael Fanone, and Daniel Hodges, all of whom had testified publicly about defending the Capitol.³ More than 50 committee staffers were identified in the panel’s final report, but the announcement did not list them by name, and it remained unclear whether consultants and contractors listed in that report were covered.⁴

Five Members of Biden’s Family

Biden also pardoned his siblings James Biden, Francis Biden, and Valerie Biden Owens, along with James Biden’s wife Sara Jones Biden and Valerie Biden Owens’s husband John Owens. Each pardon covered nonviolent offenses against the United States between January 1, 2014, and January 19, 2025.¹

None had been charged with a crime.⁵ James Biden was the subject of two active federal criminal probes tied to his business dealings with the bankrupt hospital operator Americore, including one involving alleged schemes to defraud Medicare and another involving investment fundraising from Middle Eastern sources.⁶ In June 2024, House Republicans had sent a criminal referral to the Justice Department recommending prosecution of James and Hunter Biden for allegedly making false statements during the House impeachment inquiry. James Biden’s legal counsel maintained that he and his wife had “no criminal liability.”

Why Biden Said He Did It

Biden framed the pardons as a response to “exceptional circumstances” and drew a distinction between the two groups. On Fauci, Milley, and the January 6 participants, he said they had “been subjected to ongoing threats and intimidation for faithfully discharging their duties” and needed protection from “unjustified and politically motivated prosecutions.”⁷ On his family, he wrote that they had faced “unrelenting attacks and threats, motivated solely by a desire to hurt me — the worst kind of partisan politics,” and that he had “no reason to believe these attacks will end.”⁵

Biden insisted the pardons were not admissions of guilt. “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,” he said.² He added: “I cannot in good conscience do nothing.”⁷

Not every intended recipient welcomed the move. Senator-elect Adam Schiff publicly urged Biden not to issue preemptive pardons, calling the action “defensive and unnecessary.”⁸ Former Representative Adam Kinzinger also indicated he did not want one.⁷

What the Pardons Do and Don’t Cover

Each pardon defines a window of time and a category of conduct, and everything outside that window sits outside the pardon. The Fauci, Milley, and family pardons run from January 1, 2014, through January 19, 2025. The January 6 pardon is tied to conduct connected to the committee’s work rather than a date range.¹

A pardon blocks federal criminal conviction. It does not stop investigations from being opened, and it does not spare a recipient the financial and personal cost of defending against aggressive federal scrutiny, law professor Kim Wehle told PBS. A pardon must also be accepted to take effect, which is why some potential recipients had asked not to be included.⁹

One consequence cuts the other way for recipients. Once a person is pardoned for particular conduct, they can no longer invoke the Fifth Amendment about it, because there is no longer a risk of criminal prosecution. That could expose them to compelled testimony in civil proceedings, in investigations of other people, or before Congress, as Trump attorney Jesse Binnall noted.⁷

The Hunter Biden Pardon Came First

The January 20 grants followed an earlier, related action. On December 1, 2024, Biden issued a “full and unconditional pardon” to his son Hunter Biden for any offenses against the United States committed between January 1, 2014, and December 1, 2024.¹⁰ Hunter Biden had been convicted in June 2024 on federal gun charges for lying about his drug addiction when buying a firearm, and had pleaded guilty in September 2024 to failing to pay at least $1.4 million in federal taxes. Special Counsel David Weiss prosecuted both cases.¹¹

The pardon reversed Biden’s repeated public pledges. After Hunter’s gun conviction, he had said flatly, “I will not pardon him.”¹¹ Biden then called the prosecutions a “miscarriage of justice” and said his son had been “singled out only because he is my son.”¹² The ten-year sweep of Hunter’s pardon set the template for the broader grants that followed.

Are the Pardons Legally Valid

The president’s pardon power comes from Article II, Section 2 of the Constitution and covers “Offences against the United States, except in Cases of Impeachment.” The Supreme Court held in Ex parte Garland (1866) that this power “extends to every offense known to the law and may be exercised at any time after its commission, either before legal proceedings are taken or during their pendency, or after conviction and judgment.” The Court has described the power as “unlimited” within its constitutional scope, and Congress cannot “limit the effect” of a pardon.¹³ Preemptive pardons themselves are not new; Gerald Ford pardoned Richard Nixon in September 1974 for all offenses he “committed or may have committed” while in office, before any charges were filed.¹⁴

Legal experts broadly agreed the pardons were constitutional. Jeffrey Crouch of American University confirmed the Court has recognized the power to pardon before charges are filed, though he cautioned that using it to shield political allies “could weaponize clemency” in a way “far from what the framers of the constitution had in mind.”¹⁵ Wehle called the pardon power “extremely broad” with “no expressed limits in the Constitution” and said it would be “very difficult to challenge legally a preemptive or prospective pardon.”⁹

The Trump administration has tried to undo them anyway. In March 2025, Trump declared on Truth Social that Biden’s pardons were “VOID, VACANT, AND OF NO FURTHER FORCE OR EFFECT,” arguing they were invalid because they had been signed with an autopen rather than by Biden’s own hand. Whether an autopen was actually used has not been confirmed.¹⁶ Attorney General Pam Bondi announced that the Department of Justice was investigating the pardons, and Trump’s pardon attorney, Ed Martin, said he would not recognize certain Biden-issued pardons. Republicans on the House Oversight Committee released a report alleging a cover-up of Biden’s cognitive decline and arguing that executive actions, including pardons, should be voided absent clear documentation that Biden personally authorized them.¹⁷

Legal scholars have been skeptical of that theory. Professor Steve Vladeck noted there is “no such thing as an ‘un-pardon'”; if a pardon is valid when issued, it remains “valid for all time.”¹⁸ As of late 2025, no court had invalidated any of Biden’s pardons.

1
U.S. Department of Justice. Pardons Granted by President Joseph Biden (2021–2025)
2
Lawfare. Biden Grants Preemptive Pardons to Milley, Fauci, and Others
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NBC News. Biden Issues Preemptive Pardons to Milley, Fauci, Jan. 6 Panel Members
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NPR. Biden Pardons Fauci, Milley and Members of Jan. 6 Panel
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PBS NewsHour. Biden Issues Pardons to His Family Members in Final Act in Office
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Politico. Joe Biden Family Pardon
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CNN. Joe Biden Preemptive Pardons
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Politico. Biden White House Pardons
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PBS NewsHour. Can Biden Issue Preemptive Pardons to Protect Trump Critics From Retribution
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U.S. Department of Justice. Hunter Biden Pardon Warrant
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NPR. President Biden Pardons Son Hunter
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New York Times. Biden Pardons Son Hunter
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Congress.gov. Article II, Section 2 — Presidential Pardon Power
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Ford Presidential Library. Nixon Pardon
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ABC News. Biden Considers Preemptive Pardons Experts Constitutional
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ABC News. Trump Claims Biden Pardons Jan. 6 Committee Void
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CNN. Pardon Void Autopen Biden Trump Constitution Explained
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Justia Verdict. Biden’s Preemptive Pardons Are an Unprecedented Vote of No Confidence in the New Administration