President Donald Trump has given a cryptic warning that Joe Biden should have pardoned himself before he left office.
Trump made the ominous comment in his first Oval Office interview since his swearing-in on Monday.
Fox News star Sean Hannity asked Trump his thoughts on Biden’s decision to give last-minute preemptive pardons to members of his own family, and some of the Republican president’s political enemies.
‘And you know what the funny thing, maybe the sad thing is – he didn’t give himself a pardon,’ Trump pointed out.
‘And you look at it, it all had to do with him,’ Trump added.
Trump has previously said he wants ‘retribution’ and that he believes Biden’s Justice Department was weaponized against him and other Republicans. He was charged in four separate criminal cases in the years following his first term.
The Justice Department is supposed to act independently of the White House.
During the sit-down, Trump noted that he didn’t give blanket pardons to himself or any of his allies at the end of his first stint in the White House.
‘I was given the option, they said sir would you like to pardon everybody, including yourself. I said I’m not going to pardon anybody, we didn’t do anything wrong,’ Trump said.
He said that a number of his people then ‘suffered.’
‘You had Bannon put in jail, you had Peter Navarro put in jail, you had people who suffered’, Trump said.
Steve Bannon, Trump’s longtime political strategist who briefly worked in the White House during his first term, was released after a four month stint in prison just days before the 2024 election.
Bannon was behind bars for defying a Congressional subpeona as his testimony was wanted about the January 6 Capitol attack.
Navarro was the first former Trump White House official to be imprisoned for a contempt of Congress conviction.
He was released from prison in July, after also serving a four month term.
Prior to leaving office Trump did pardon a number of his political allies including Roger Stone, Paul Manafort and Charles Kushner, the father of Trump’s son-in-law Jared Kushner.
House Speaker Mike Johnson has already said that House Republicans would investigate Biden’s pardons, which included members of the House select January 6 committee.
While the two Republicans who served on that committee no longer serve in Congress – ex-Reps. Liz Cheney and Adam Kinzinger – a number of Democrats are still in the House.
Biden’s blanket pardons were also given to his siblings and their spouses, former Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff Mark Milley, Sen. Adam Schiff and Dr. Anthony Fauci.
Fauci ran the COVID-19 response in both the Trump and Biden administrations, and who has since been hammered by the political right for COVID-era lockdowns.
The full interview with Hannity will air Wednesday night at 9 p.m. ET.
