President Donald Trump told Fox News’s Sean Hannity it’s “sad” that former president Joe Biden didn’t pardon himself at the end of his administration.
Trump made the remark to Hannity as he was asked about his predecessor’s decision to pardon members of his own family and others he said he would be targeted by Republicans, in Trump’s first interview from the White House Wednesday. The interview was being aired in full Wednesday at 9 p.m. Eastern time.
Biden issued several pardons in the final hours of his presidency Monday after Trump declared he would seek “retribution” against his perceived enemies by using his powers as president while on the campaign trail.
“This guy is running around giving everyone pardons,” Trump told Hannity. “The funny thing, maybe the sad thing, is he didn’t give himself a pardon.”
“And if you look at it, it all had to do with him,” Trump added.
The 46th president granted unconditional pardons to multiple members of his family, including his brother James Biden and sister-in-law Sara Biden, his brother Frank Biden, his sister Valerie Biden Owens, and her husband John Owens.
Biden said his family has been “subjected to unrelenting attacks and threats, motivated solely by a desire to hurt me—the worst kind of partisan politics.” He added he had “no reason to believe these attacks will end.”
He also issued pre-emptive pardons for Dr. Anthony Fauci, General Mark Milley and lawmakers who served on the House committee that investigated the January 6, 2021 Capitol riots in anticipation of their political persecution by Trump.
Trump slammed Biden for the pardons, claiming he didn’t do the same because “we didn’t do anything wrong.”
“I was given the option,” Trump said of pre-emptive pardons. “They said, ‘Sir, would you like to pardon everybody, including yourself?’ I said, ‘I’m not going to pardon anybody.’”
“We didn’t do anything wrong,” he added. “And we had people that suffered, they’re incredible patriots. We had people that suffered. You had [Steve] Bannon put in jail. You had Peter Navarro put in jail.”
“You had people that suffered and and far worse than that, they’ve lost their fortunes. They’ve lost their nest egg, paying it to lawyers.”
Trump has, however, pardoned members of his extended family before. In 2020 he issued a pardon to Charles Kushner, father of Trump’s son-in-law, Jared Kushner. The older Kushner committed what sometime Trump ally Chris Christie called “one of the most loathsome, disgusting crimes” he had ever prosecuted, hiring a prostitute to lure his own brother to an assignation which would then be filmed and sent to his wife.
He was convicted of illegal campaign contributions, tax evasion, and witness tampering and sentenced to two years in prison.
Trump has now nominated Charles Kushner to be US ambassador to France.
Meanwhile, Trump on his first day back in office issued pardons for some 1,500 people convicted of crimes related to the January 6, 2021 Capitol riots in the first hours of his presidency.
Hannity recorded the interview in the Oval Office on Wednesday. He told reporters the discussion went “amazing.”
“He is focused and he’s happy and he has a big agenda,” Hannity said of Trump. “He’s dialed in.”
