WASHINGTON — As President Biden considers preemptive pardons to protect potential targets from retaliatory prosecutions by President-elect Donald Trump, one of the targets said Monday that he doesn’t want him to set a partisan precedent.
President Trump said Sunday that the members of Congress who investigated the Jan. 6, 2021, Capitol riot should be jailed.
“Honestly, they should go to jail,” Trump said of the elected officials who led the investigation in an interview with NBC’s “Meet the Press.”
One of those investigators, former Rep. Adam B. Schiff (D-Burbank), is scheduled to be sworn in as a junior U.S. senator from California on Monday. Schiff served on the Jan. 6 committee that led Trump’s first impeachment trial.
“I don’t want to see a precedent where a president grants blanket pardons to members of his party and members of his administration when he leaves office,” Schiff said in an interview with the Times. “There was talk that President Trump did something like that when he left office, and that members of Congress like Mark Meadows and Jim Jordan were asking him for pardons. It’s a further decline in our democracy.” And I think that’s completely unnecessary.”
President Trump said Sunday that he would not directly order his administration to pursue such prosecutions, leaving the decision to his attorney general nominee Pam Bondi.
He also said he would “probably” pardon supporters convicted of rioting.
Schiff said he believes President Trump’s Jan. 6 comments regarding the indictment of committee members are primarily intended to have a chilling effect on Congressional and judicial oversight. Instead of a preemptive pardon, Schiff said, the Biden administration can ensure that all records of the Justice Department’s investigation from January 6 are preserved and that the special counsel’s report “allows the evidence to come to light.” He said he is asking for as much information as possible to be made public. It will not be buried or misrepresented. ”
Asked if he was worried about being targeted, Schiff said he was more worried about the growing acceptance of political violence.
“We’ve all been receiving threats for years, and the threats seem to be escalating,” he says. “That’s more pressing than a vague threat like ‘I’m going to jail.'”
Mr. Schiff won the election to replace outgoing Sen. LaFonza Butler, who was appointed by Gov. Gavin Newsom to temporarily fill the seat of the late Sen. Dianne Feinstein following her death in September 2023. did.
He rose to national prominence during President Trump’s first term, leading multiple investigations into Trump and his allies.
Schiff said how far President Trump can go to target members of the Jan. 6 committee will depend on who is confirmed to hold key law enforcement positions. He said Kash Patel, President Trump’s nominee to head the FBI, is not fit for the role.
As a senator, Schiff weighed other candidates, including Bondi, who supported Trump’s claims that the 2020 election was stolen and threatened to go after the Justice Department prosecutors who prosecuted Trump. He said he would ask questions.
“I want to know if that was really her intention or if it was some kind of political exaggeration,” Schiff said. “I think some of his picks, like Marco Rubio, are very well-qualified. It’s obviously a mixed lot, so we’ll take them one at a time.”
Beyond confirmation, Schiff said he has begun scheduling meetings with Republican senators after meeting with Democratic senators over the past six months. He said he wants to single out common bipartisan issues that he can start tackling with colleagues across the aisle, such as wildfire prevention, rural health care and the high cost of housing that pushes residents in many states into homelessness. .
“When I first walked into the Senate chamber during the Trump impeachment, I felt like a lot of people only knew me from Fox,” he said. “I think they were a little surprised that I wasn’t the stereotype they saw on conservative TV.”
He’s also spending more time in Northern California and the Imperial Valley, just as he recently did in the Central Valley, and hopes residents will see him not just as someone who represents the Los Angeles area, but also as an Imperial Valley He also said that he would like to be seen as a champion. The entire state.
“I want to hear what they want me to focus on, what their priorities are and what I can do to bring resources back to their cities, communities and regions,” he said. . “With two male senators, we’re going to work harder than ever to get women to our seats.”
Times staff writer Kevin Rector and The Associated Press contributed to this report.
