by Dr. Piyush Mathur

President Joe Biden’s unprecedented use of preemptive pardons for family members, key political allies, and prominent critics of Donald Trump reflects not just a moment of extraordinary executive power but the fragile state of American democracy in an era of escalating partisanship and institutional abuse. Biden’s actions must be viewed in the context of the chaos that marked the final days of Trump’s first term and the extraordinary threats posed by Trump’s rhetoric and actions as he began his second term.

While Biden’s clemency decisions may appear as a distortion of the presidential pardon’s intended purpose, they were driven by the reality of what came before: a presidency that weaponized pardons for personal gain, an assault on the nation’s seat of power on January 6, 2021, and explicit threats of revenge that Trump made central to his return to the Oval Office. Biden’s extraordinary move illustrates the perilous state of the American justice system and the dire need for reform to the clemency process—reforms that should address both its abuse by Trump and its use as a protective shield by Biden. Under the present circumstances, with Trump back in his seat, those reforms have no chance of being considered.

The shadow of Trump’s pardon abuses

To understand Biden’s decision, one must first confront the glaring abuses of the presidential pardon system during Donald Trump’s first term. Trump wielded the pardon power with brazen disregard for its original intent—to provide mercy in cases of injustice; he used it, instead, as a tool of political patronage and self-preservation.

Trump issued pardons to close allies like Michael Flynn, Paul Manafort, and Roger Stone—figures deeply enmeshed in scandals tied to his administration. Flynn, Trump’s former national security advisor, was pardoned despite admitting to lying to the FBI about his contacts with Russian officials. Manafort, Trump’s former campaign chairman, had been convicted of bank and tax fraud in connection to special counsel Robert Mueller’s investigation into Russian interference in the 2016 election. Stone, another Trump confidant, was convicted of lying to Congress and witness tampering—acts explicitly tied to shielding Trump.

These pardons were not just acts of clemency; they were calculated political maneuvers that demonstrated Trump’s willingness to reward loyalty, protect his inner circle, and obstruct accountability. Worse, they set a precedent for presidents to use pardons as a shield against legal and political scrutiny, further eroding public trust in the justice system.

January 6, 2021: The collapse of institutional norms

Biden’s pardons also cannot be disentangled from the context of January 6, 2021, when Trump supporters stormed Capitol Hill in a violent attempt to overturn the results of the 2020 presidential election. The attack was unprecedented in American history and marked the culmination of months of Trump’s baseless claims of election fraud and incendiary rhetoric about ‘stolen votes’.

Trump’s role in inciting the attack is well-documented. During his ‘Save America’ rally on January 6, he urged his supporters to ‘fight like hell’ and march to the Capitol, where they disrupted the certification of Biden’s electoral victory. Several people died in the riot, and several others later on as a result thereof. The images of the chaos—a mob chanting death threats against lawmakers and ransacking the halls of Congress—were broadcast around the world, tarnishing the United States’ reputation as a beacon of orderly democracy.

For those targeted by Trump’s wrath—political adversaries like former Congresswoman Liz Cheney, who had the courage to condemn him, and General Mark Milley, who had warned of Trump’s authoritarian tendencies—the fallout was severe. Trump openly vowed retribution against anyone he viewed as disloyal, including federal officials who upheld their oaths to the Constitution.

A second term of threats and vengeance

As Trump campaigned for his second term and continued to amplify his grievances, his calls for revenge became a centrepiece of his rhetoric. He openly promised to investigate and prosecute Biden and his family members, weaponize the Department of Justice, and retaliate against political opponents who had opposed him during his first term.

In this context, Biden’s preemptive pardons appear less as an abuse of power and more as an act of defensive governance in the face of an unprecedented threat to the rule of law. The outgoing president’s clemency decisions were shaped by the knowledge that Trump’s second term would likely bring a scorched-earth approach to governance, with the potential for politically motivated prosecutions of Biden’s family and allies.

Biden’s pardons—covering his siblings, Dr. Anthony Fauci, General Milley, and members of the January 6 Committee—were designed to preempt the kind of retaliatory legal action Trump had explicitly promised. While controversial, they reflect the grim reality of a political system in which the presidency has become increasingly untethered from traditional norms of justice and accountability. These shifts in American politics were most notably acknowledged by Vermont Senator and former presidential candidate Bernie Sanders, who, while mildly critical of the precedent set by Biden’s controversial pardon of his convicted son Hunter, had nonetheless publicly urged the president to issue preemptive pardons for members of the January 6 Committee in light of Trump’s explicit threats against them.

A broken clemency system—or a mirror of US politics?

Biden’s decision highlights the urgent need to reform the presidential pardon system, which has been weaponized by presidents from both parties in recent years. While Biden’s pardons were defensive and reactive to the context of Trump’s abuses, they nonetheless underscore the broader flaws in a system that grants the president unchecked clemency authority—even on a mass scale.

The framers of the US Constitution envisioned the pardon power as a mechanism for correcting judicial errors and granting mercy in exceptional cases. But without guardrails, it has evolved into a tool for rewarding loyalty, obstructing investigations, and insulating allies from accountability. Biden’s actions, though driven by necessity, are further proof of how the pardon system has strayed from its original intent—if in part because American politics itself has degenerated into a crude vendetta.

As far as steps that could be taken to reform the US presidential pardon system, they are not that difficult to conceptualize. For instance, an independent, bipartisan clemency review board could be established for screening clemency applications before they make it to the president; the presidency may be legally required to provide a detailed justification for each pardon; self-interested pardons may be explicitly prohibited; Congress could be granted power to overturn a pardon through a supermajority vote; and preemptive pardons may be ruled out provided the foregoing steps would have already been taken.

However, Trump, the newly reelected president, would have no interest in taking any of the above steps. And when one puts President Biden’s preemptive pardons next to Trump’s recent pardons of almost all (around 1500) rioters of January 6, 2021, then what one sees is not the inauguration of a ‘golden age’ for the United States (to use Trump’s own words regarding what his new tenure ushers in for the US), but a hitherto leading democracy under siege.

Without meaningful reform, presidential clemency will continue to be a tool of convenience for the powerful rather than a mechanism for justice. To the outside world, this quickly unfolding abuse of clemency at the highest level in the United States is the strongest signal to come out of the recent election cycle—and the message it delivers is that might is the only thing that ultimately matters.

Dr. Piyush Mathur is the author of Technological Forms and Ecological Communication: A Theoretical Heuristic (Lexington Books, 2017). You can drop a message for him via this contact form.