Biden’s last-minute pardons slammed by CNN panel as ‘stain on his legacy’

CNN reporters and hosts said Monday that President Biden’s decision to pardon his family members in the waning minutes of his administration tarnished his reputation and was “a stain on his legacy.”

“Well, as it turns out, Anderson, there is another promise broken. That is exactly how he has ultimately decided to approach the justice system. This is a decision that is going to raise so many alarming questions about the legal precedence that this now sets. And it would have been really one of the very final acts for President Biden as a sitting president,” CNN’s MJ Lee said, noting that Biden had told CNN’s Jake Tapper in December of 2020 that the U.S. would not see preemptive pardons in his administration, and that his approach to the justice system would be totally different from President Trump’s. 

Biden’s pardon applies to James Biden, Sara Jones Biden, Valerie Biden Owens, John Owens, and Francis Biden, the White House announced during Trump’s inauguration ceremony. The now-former president argued that his family could be subject to “politically motivated investigations” after he leaves office.

Lee said earlier in her statement that this was another way the former president had tarnished his own legacy. 

PRESIDENT TRUMP CALLS BIDEN LAST-MINUTE PARDONS ‘UNFORTUNATE’ IN SIGNING CEREMONY

CNN commentator and “The View” co-host Alyssa Farah Griffin argued during the discussion the pardon of family members was “much muddier” than his last-minute pardons of Liz Cheney, Gen. Mark Milley and Anthony Fauci.

“It is just unseemly,” CNN host John King said. “If you’re going to do it, have the courage to do it in the light of day and explain it to the American people. It’s a stain on his legacy to do it like this. We could have an argument about, is it necessary, has Donald Trump promised retribution? Yes he has, if you’re the President of the United States who said the curse of Donald Trump was that he didn’t respect democracy and didn’t respect norms, have the courage to look the American people in the eye and explain what you’re doing.”

Former Obama aide David Axelrod said that the timing of the pardons looked suspicious.

“The fact is that Trump has been saying this for a long time. That doesn‘t explain why in the last 10 minutes of your presidency you slip a release out there, it just made the whole thing look tawdry,” Axelrod said.

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David Axelrod speaks during CNN on Jan. 20, 2025. (Screenshot/CNN)

In December 2020, CNN anchor Jake Tapper asked Biden if he was concerned about rumors that Trump, who he had just defeated, would dole out a wave of preemptive pardons for some of his closest confidantes.

“Well, it concerns me in terms of what kind of precedent it sets in how the rest of the world looks at us as a nation of laws and justice,” he said at the time.

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“You’re not going to see in our administration that kind of approach to pardons,” Biden added. “Nor are you going to see in our administration the approach to making policy by tweets. You know, it’s going to be a totally different way in which we approach the justice system.”

Fox News’ Nikolas Lanum and Anders Hagstrom contributed to this report.