U.S. President Donald Trump gestures while holding a sword as U.S. Vice President JD Vance laughs, at the Commander in Chief Ball in honor of Trump's inauguration in Washington, U.S., January 20, 2025.
Yesterday, in the last hours of his administration, President Biden issued preemptive pardons to many people who tried to hold Trump responsible for seeking to overturn the results of the 2020 election and against whom Trump has promised “retribution.”
Biden stressed that he did not issue the pardons because any of the recipients committed crimes. “The issuance of these pardons should not be mistaken as an acknowledgment that any individual engaged in any wrongdoing, nor should acceptance be misconstrued as an admission of guilt for any offense,” he said.
As I read through Biden’s list, I couldn’t help asking myself: What about all the people who have done their jobs conscientiously in the public interest, but are not covered by Biden’s preemptive pardon? What if Trump’s retribution extends to them?
Whom am I thinking of, specifically? Trump’s nominee for FBI director, Kash Patel, has come up with a specific list. In Patel’s 2023 book Government Gangsters, he lists 60 current and former executive branch officials whom he refers to as members of the “Executive Branch Deep State.”
Patel calls these people “a cabal of tyrants” and “the most dangerous threat to our democracy.” In Patel’s words, these people:
“spread disinformation, spurn fairness, or even violate their oaths of office for political and personal gain, all at the expense of equal justice and American national security. … In many ways, this bureaucratic wing of the Deep State is the most dangerous.”
Patel lists several people who served in the Obama administration — including John Brennan, former CIA director under President Obama; James Clapper, former director of national intelligence under Obama; Eric Holder, former attorney general under Obama; and John Podesta, former counselor to Obama.
Patel also lists several officials of the first Trump administration, including Bill Barr, Trump’s former attorney general, and John Bolton, Trump’s former national security adviser.
Also on Patel’s list are Hillary Clinton, former Vice President Kamala Harris, and former President Joe Biden.
Comparing Patel’s list with the list of people whom Biden just preemptively pardoned, I wonder how far Trump’s “retribution” will actually go, and whether Biden should have granted himself and Harris and Clinton preemptory pardons as well.
Which got me wondering whether a president can issue a preemptory pardon for himself, and whether Trump — who is issuing past-pardons to the people who were convicted of participating in the January 6, 2021, attack on the U.S. Capitol — will preemptively pardon himself for everything he did in connection with seeking to overturn the 2020 election. (Otherwise, he’d still be criminally liable when he left office.) Hell, he might preemptively pardon himself for everything he might do in the future.
Patel’s book also shows why Patel himself would make a disastrous director of the FBI. It’s clear Trump chose him to be the arrow on Trump’s spear of retribution.
Patel would undermine the rule of law and the investigative mission of the Justice Department. He would make a mockery of the department’s stated goal of a fair and impartial administration of justice for all Americans.
Under no circumstances should Patel be confirmed.
In contrast to the people against whom Trump has promised retribution are the people for whom Trump has promised tax cuts, rollbacks of health and environmental regulations, and other benefits — the billionaires, many of whom were standing close to Trump when he took the oath of office today.
Trump’s inaugural address yesterday was as absurdly negative about America as was his “carnage” inaugural in 2017. The “disasters” he cited today included the Biden administration’s supposed “weaponization” of the Justice Department.
Another disaster Trump mentioned yesterday was the Pacific Palisades fire. He made clear where his sympathies lay — not with the middle-class Black families who lost their homes in Altadena but with “some of the wealthiest and most powerful individuals in our country, some of whom are sitting here right now. They don’t have a home any longer.”
Trump’s compassion almost makes you want to cry, doesn’t it?
Then he added: “That’s interesting.”
Um, “interesting?” Interesting that the homes of some of the wealthiest and most powerful were consumed in the fire? What was Trump getting at here? That Gavin Newsom and California’s water policies are to blame?
Or was he suggesting something more nefarious — a conspiracy against some of his biggest and richest supporters (many of whom were gathered lovingly around him today)? An intentional effort to threaten their lives?
That would be the obvious next target for Trumpian conspiracy theories: people on the left who have spoken out against his billionaire supporters. Hey, why not seek retribution against them, too?
Robert Reich is a professor of public policy at Berkeley and former secretary of labor. His writings can be found at https://robertreich.substack.com/.
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