Former Biden comms director slams ex-president’s last-minute pardons: ‘Disappointing move’
Former Biden White House communications director Kate Bedingfield grilled her old boss Tuesday over the controversial presidential pardons he granted just before leaving office.
The CNN political commentator slammed now-former President Biden’s Inauguration Day pardons as antithetical to his rhetoric about respecting the “rule of law.”
“It was a disappointing move,” she said, adding, “I was disappointed in it. I think he has spoken so eloquently about the need to preserve the rule of law.”
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Ex-Biden White House official Kate Bedingfield slammed President Biden’s last-minute pardons of his family on Tuesday.
Biden pardoned his family members James Biden, Sara Jones Biden, Valerie Biden Owens, John Owens and Francis Biden on Monday, just minutes before President Trump was sworn in.
In a statement alongside the pardons, Biden said it was to defend them from “politically motivated investigations.”
Before leaving office, Biden also issued pardons earlier on Monday for Dr. Anthony Fauci, Gen. Mark Milley and people associated with the House select committee investigation into January 6.
The Inauguration Day pardons follow high-profile pardons Biden enacted late last year, most notably for his son, Hunter Biden, who had been convicted on federal charges related to illegal firearm ownership and tax fraud.
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Biden issued several preemptive pardons of prominent critics of Donald Trump on Monday. (Left to right: (Photo by: William B. Plowman/NBC via Getty Images), (Photo by Mandel Ngan – Pool/Getty Images), (Photo by Anna Moneymaker/Getty Images), (Photo by Chip Somodevilla/Getty Images))
Bedingfield suggested Biden’s last-minute pardons are hypocritical, reminding viewers that the ex-president once slammed the idea of Trump pardoning his family members at the end of the president’s first administration.
“As he was coming into office in 2020, he talked about the idea of Trump pardoning his family and said that it would send a bad message,” the former Biden official said, adding that this criticism of Trump’s pardons extends to Biden’s own.
“And I think it’s hard to argue that it didn’t yesterday. I will be totally candid. I think it was disappointing,” she said.
However, Bedingfield gave Biden some cover, noting that his stance on pardons changing might reflect Trump’s alleged willingness to go after his political opponents.
“I also think you have to recognize that we are now in a Trump 2.0 era where Trump has been very clear that he intends to use the long arm of the government to go after his political enemies, and I can understand why Joe Biden might look at his family and say, ‘I’m going to do everything in my power to protect them on the way out the door,'” she said.
“As a human matter, I can understand that argument,” she added.
Bedingfield also said that she does not think Biden’s pardons give Trump any cover for conducting his own while in office.
As one of his first actions in office on Monday, Trump signed an executive order pardoning more than 1,500 individuals charged with crimes stemming from the Jan. 6, 2021, attack at the U.S. Capitol. The order requires the Federal Bureau of Prisons to act immediately on receipt of the pardons.
