Merve Aydogan
21 January 2025•Update: 21 January 2025
HAMILTON, Canada
US President Donald Trump on Monday criticized Joe Biden using his last hours at the White House to grant pardons to several of his family members as "unfortunate."
Following the signing ceremony of documents at the Capitol, the newly inaugurated Trump spoke about Biden using his presidential pardon power at the last minute.
"I think it was unfortunate that he did that," Trump said, adding that "there's plenty of time to discuss" it more later.
In a speech to supporters, Trump said, "I was going to talk about the things that Joe did today with the pardons of people that were very, very guilty of very bad crimes like the unselect committee of political thugs," mocking the name of a select US House committee to investigate the 2021 attack on the capital, which they concluded Trump had incited.
He claimed the committee members had "destroyed and deleted all of the information, all of the hearings, practically not a thing left."
"They deleted all the information on (former House Speaker) Nancy Pelosi," he said, referring to his accusations she was responsible for the violent Jan. 6, 2021 insurrection.
Trump also criticized Biden earlier pardoning people facing death sentences, saying that Biden “spared them, but they didn't spare the people that they killed."
It is typical for departing US presidents to issue large numbers of pardons close to the end of their terms.
At the end of his first term in 2017-2021, Trump also pardoned a number of relatives as well as political allies.
Earlier Monday, Biden on Monday granted pardons to several of his family members, citing what he called "unrelenting" politically motivated attacks against them.
Criticizing "unrelenting attacks and threats" as well as “politically driven” investigations he said target his family for partisan reasons, Biden said: "Unfortunately, I have no reason to believe these attacks will end."
He added: "The issuance of these pardons should not be mistaken as an acknowledgment that they engaged in any wrongdoing, nor should acceptance be misconstrued as an admission of guilt for any offense."
The Biden administration has been an advocate for using clemency, with many offenders or alleged offenders pressing him to take such measures.
Biden's first major pardon was in December, for his son Hunter Biden, who was found guilty of federal gun charges stemming from his possession of a firearm while addicted to drugs in 2018. After a plea deal in that case was rejected, critics said the president’s son was being prosecuted in a case where any other person would have not been charged.
Trump’s Republican Party often lashed out at Hunter Biden, trying to link him to a complex web of conspiracies.
