Health and Human Services (HHS) Secretary Xavier Becerra warned against the impact of a preemptive presidential pardon for people like Dr. Anthony Fauci just hours after President Biden said in an interview that he was still considering it.
"It sinks my heart to think that we’re going to use the pardon process in a way that will follow the whims of whoever’s in the White House," Becerra, who previously served as California's attorney general before taking his post at HHS, said in an interview with The New York Times on Wednesday. Becerra noted that he was speaking from his legal background as opposed to his position in Biden's Cabinet.
"I think we should hold that power, that only a president has, in very high regard," he continued. "Because otherwise it becomes pedestrian, and it’s used anywhere, and I don’t think that should be the case."
When the HHS secretary was asked directly if he meant that the president should not pardon Fauci, who was Biden's former chief medical adviser during the pandemic and served as the director of the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases for several decades, Becerra declined to clarify.
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"I won’t try to interpret what you’re hearing; I just told you what I think," he replied.
Becerra's comments came hours after Biden's final interview as president with a print publication, during which he said preemptive pardons for Trump's political targets were still under consideration.
President-elect Trump's nominees for director of the FBI and attorney general, Kash Patel and Pam Bondi, respectively, have previously indicated they are in favor of using the Justice Department to go after people they believe unfairly targeted Trump.
Meanwhile, Republicans in Congress and some of Trump's top transition advisers, such as Elon Musk, have argued that Fauci should be prosecuted over his handling of the COVID-19 pandemic.
Trump's nominee to be the successor to Becerra, Robert F. Kennedy, Jr., said while he was running for president — before joining Trump's team — that he would prosecute Fauci if he won the November election and his attorney general determined that crimes had been committed in Fauci's handling of the coronavirus. During the pandemic, Fauci was accused of working to evade public records laws and lying to Congress in apparent efforts to conceal the origins of the virus.
Democrats are split on whether Biden should offer preemptive pardons to public officials who may be politically targeted by Trump.
"If we’re serious about stopping Trump’s authoritarian ambitions, we need to act decisively and use every tool at our disposal. Norms and traditions alone won’t stop — Trump has shown time and again that he’s willing to ignore them to consolidate power and punish his opponents," Rep. Brendan Boyle, D-Pa., said in a statement last month calling on Biden to issue a blanket pardon for Trump's political foes. "The time for cautious restraint is over. We must act with urgency to push back against these threats and prevent Trump from abusing his power."
Legal experts have said that Biden has the authority to issue preemptive pardons, citing a precedent set by former President Gerald Ford when he granted a blanket pardon to Richard Nixon for any crimes committed while in office, even though Nixon had not been charged with anything after resigning following the Watergate scandal.
Fox News Digital reached out to HHS for comment but did not receive a response in time for publication.
