The now-long-defunct Jan. 6 House select committee's members are reportedly privately talking potential pardons with President Joe Biden in the final hours of his administration, hoping to protect themselves from legal accountability from the incoming administration under President-elect Donald Trump.
Former Chair Bennie Thompson, D-Miss., is among the leading House members fearing accountability from Trump, who has been talking about criminal destruction of evidence, including that which would exonerate Trump against former special counsel Jack Smith's ceased cases, Punchbowl News reported Tuesday morning.
"I believe Donald Trump when he says he's going to inflict retribution on this," Thompson said on Monday night. "I believe when he says my name and Liz Cheney and the others. I believe him."
Biden has wide pardon power before he officially leaves office Monday, and Thompson is talking with White House legal counsel about preemptive pardons to shield him from criminal charges, like Trump has alleged with the destruction of evidence and the House Oversight report has alleged with witness tampering on behalf of former Wyoming Republican Rep. Liz Cheney.
Congress' Speech or Debate Clause does protect House members to some extent, but Thompson remains worried, he told Punchbowl News.
"A lot of people have said if [Trump] said he's going to do things, believe him," Thompson said. "If the president offered a pardon based on the work of the committee, Bennie Thompson would accept it."
Cheney was alleged by Rep. Barry Loudermilk, R-Ga., in the House Oversight report to warrant a criminal investigation for witness tampering with former Trump White House aide Cassidy Hutchinson.
"The report is a politically motivated attempt to rewrite history using fabricated allegations regarding Ms. Hutchinson and the circumstances that led her to courageously tell the truth to the Select Committee," Hutchinson's lawyer wrote in a letter to Loudermilk.
Biden said Friday he was still considering whether to give pardons to people who sought to convict Trump for contesting the 2020 presidential election.
"It depends on some of the language and expectations that Trump broadcast in the last couple days here as to what he's going to do," Biden said. "The idea that he would punish people for not adhering to what he thinks should be policy related to his well-being is just outrageous."
Biden has less than a week left in his pardon power, but issuing preemptive pardons — for actual or imagined offenses by Trump's critics that could be investigated or prosecuted by the incoming administration — would stretch the powers of the presidency in untested ways.
Biden, who Trump has said should be jailed, scoffed at the notion that he would pardon himself.
"What would I pardon myself for?" he asked incredulously. "No, I have no contemplation of pardoning myself for anything. I didn't do anything wrong."
Former Illinois Republican Rep. Adam Kinzinger rejected the prospect of a pardon from Biden earlier this week in an appearance on CNN.
"I understand the theory behind it because Donald Trump has clearly said he's going to go after everybody," Kinzinger said. "But the second you take a pardon and it looks like you're guilty of something — I'm guilty of nothing besides bringing the truth to the American people and, in the process, embarrassing Donald Trump."
Information from The Associated Press was used to compile this report.