Senator Adam Schiff (D-CA) has recently expressed his opposition to the idea of President Joe Biden issuing a pardon before the anticipated return of Donald Trump to the White House.
This comes in the wake of Trump's declaration of his openness to the Department of Justice prosecuting lawmakers involved in the January 6th Capitol riot Committee. Trump has also pledged to pardon some of the riot participants on his first day back in office.
According to Mediaite, Schiff, during a Sunday morning interview on ABCs This Week, conveyed to anchor George Stephanopoulos his stance against a pardon, a message he has relayed both publicly and privately to the administration. Stephanopoulos questioned Schiff about his reluctance to accept a preemptive pardon from President Biden, asking if it was because he believed the Trump administration would not actually prosecute.
Schiff responded, "I dont know what the Trump administration will do, but its for a couple of reasons. First, those of us on the committee are very proud of the work we did. We were doing vital, quintessential oversight of a violent attack on the Capitol. So I think its unnecessary. But second, the precedent of giving blanket pardons, preemptive blanket pardons on the way out of an administration, I think is a precedent we dont want to set." He confirmed that he had communicated this stance both publicly and privately to the administration.
However, not all lawmakers share Schiff's viewpoint. Senator Bernie Sanders, for instance, has suggested that Biden should seriously contemplate issuing blanket preemptive pardons for the January 6 committee and others, as he expressed to NBC News on Sunday. The contrasting opinions of these lawmakers highlight the ongoing debate about the potential implications of such pardons.
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