President Biden Pardons Family Members

Minutes before leaving office, President Joe Biden pardoned several of his family members.

The Details: Biden pardoned his brother James and his wife Sarah, his sister Valerie Biden Owens and her husband John T. Owens, and his brother Francis Biden. Biden said his family had been “subjected to unrelenting attacks and threats, motivated solely by a desire to hurt me — the worst kind of partisan politics,” and that he has “no reason to believe these attacks will end.”

For Context: None of these family members were charged with crimes. Earlier on Monday, Biden pardoned prominent officials including former NIAID head Dr. Anthony Fauci and former Reps. Liz Cheney (R-WY), Adam Kinzinger (R-IL), and Sen. Adam Schiff (D-CA). In December, Biden pardoned his son Hunter, who had been charged with gun, drug, and tax crimes. According to Wikipedia, Biden pardoned 8,064 individuals in total, the most in history.

How The Media Covered It: Due to the breaking nature of the story, outlets offered short, concise coverage of the additional pardons. In TV coverage viewed by AllSides, CNN (Lean Left bias) host John King said, "It's a stain on his legacy to do it like this." CNN host David Axelrod said, "He tried to slip it in in the final minutes...It just made the whole thing look tawdry." 

Twitter Discourse: More immediately, some viral posts on X highlighted the previous remarks from Biden and Schiff. Schiff previously wrote on X that Trump “abused” the power of the presidential pardon and that Democrats “would prevent future abuse of the pardon.” In 2020, Biden told CNN he would not take a preemptive “approach to pardons.”