Former FBI Director James Comey told CNN on Thursday that he "never" considered asking Joe Biden for a preemptive pardon before President Trump returned to office, and insisted he would have turned one down flat. The claim lands at a moment when Comey faces two federal indictments and Biden's eleventh-hour pardon spree remains under active Justice Department review.
Comey made the remarks during an interview with CNN's Kasie Hunt, who pressed him on whether he believed Biden might have granted him a pardon if asked. His answer was blunt.
The Hill reported that Comey responded, "I don't know," when asked whether Biden would have obliged, then added without hesitation: "I wouldn't have accepted it."
To explain why he would refuse a pardon, Comey reached back more than a century. He cited a Supreme Court precedent holding that accepting a presidential pardon carried an "imputation of guilt and acceptance of a confession of it." Then he tied it to a more familiar name.
"It's what consoled Gerald Ford when he pardoned Richard Nixon. He carried a quote from the case in his wallet till the day he died, because it meant Nixon had admitted guilt."
The former FBI chief then turned the logic on himself:
"And so, I'm not guilty. I am innocent, so I wouldn't be accepting any pardons."
It is a tidy legal argument. Whether it holds up against the facts Comey now faces in federal court is another matter entirely.
Comey has been indicted twice by the Justice Department. He faces two federal charges in North Carolina connected to a since-deleted social media post showing seashells arranged to read "86 47." Federal prosecutors argued the message constituted a direct threat to the 47th president's life.
Comey has pushed back on that interpretation. He said last year that he believed the arrangement was a "political message" and that he was unaware the numbers could carry a violent connotation. He deleted the photo amid backlash but said he had "thought about it carefully."
The broader controversy over the FBI's conduct during and after the 2016 campaign has followed Comey for years and forms the backdrop against which his current legal troubles play out.
After his second indictment, Comey struck a defiant tone. "I'm not afraid," he said. He added: "I won't talk about a case that's pending, but I will not stop talking about the threats that this administration poses to the rule of law."
Critics of the prosecutions see a pressure campaign aimed at political foes. Comey himself has used the word "obsessively" and "repeatedly" to describe what he views as the administration's focus on him. But the charges are now in the hands of federal prosecutors, and a courtroom, not a cable news set, will determine whether the evidence supports them.
Comey's claim that he never sought a pardon is notable precisely because so many others did receive one. In the waning weeks of his term, Biden issued a wave of preemptive presidential pardons for family members, their spouses, and figures he apparently viewed as potential targets of the incoming administration.
Among the recipients were Dr. Anthony Fauci, retired Gen. Mark Milley, and members and witnesses tied to the House Jan. 6 committee. AP News reported that Biden framed the move as a response to "exceptional circumstances," saying, "I cannot in good conscience do nothing." He added that "even when individuals have done nothing wrong... the mere fact of being investigated or prosecuted can irreparably damage reputations and finances."
The scope was extraordinary. Many recipients had not been charged or even investigated, raising questions about whether Biden was setting a new precedent for how far executive clemency could stretch.
Biden's blanket pardon of his son Hunter drew particular criticism, including from some fellow Democrats. Hunter Biden himself later acknowledged the "privilege" behind his father's pardon, even as he tried to redirect attention toward the incoming administration's clemency record.
The New York Post reported that senior White House officials had discussed a preemptive pardon for Milley out of concern that the Trump administration might pursue him over his secret calls to Chinese Gen. Li Zuocheng before the 2020 election and after Jan. 6, 2021. Trump had publicly condemned those communications as a "treasonous act."
The process by which Biden's pardons were executed has itself become a controversy. The Washington Examiner reported that Biden's then-chief of staff Jeff Zients approved the use of an autopen on January 19 to sign hundreds of clemency warrants, writing, "I approve the use of the autopen for the execution of all of the following pardons." Biden told the New York Times that he "made every decision" but acknowledged he did not personally approve every individual in the mass clemency actions, instead letting staff apply general criteria to large batches of cases.
Fox News reported that the Justice Department is now reviewing Biden's pardons amid concerns about the autopen's use and questions about Biden's mental acuity in his final months in office. Biden granted clemency or pardons to more than 1,500 people in his final weeks, described by his White House as the largest single-day act of clemency by a U.S. president. Fox noted that Biden signed Hunter Biden's pardon by hand, while many other controversial pardons appear to have been signed by machine.
The contrast is hard to miss. The one pardon Biden apparently wanted to make sure bore his personal signature was the one shielding his own son.
The U.S. Constitution gives a sitting president broad authority under Article 2 to grant pardons, clemency, and commutations before, during, or after a criminal conviction, excluding cases of impeachment. Biden used that power liberally. Comey says he wanted no part of it.
Whether that decision reflects genuine principle or a calculated bet is a question only Comey can answer. The Ford-Nixon precedent he invoked is real. Accepting a pardon does carry a legal implication of guilt. For a man insisting on his innocence, taking a preemptive pardon would have undercut his defense before it ever reached a jury.
But the practical reality is stark. Comey now faces trial without the safety net that Biden extended to Fauci, Milley, and a long list of others. The ongoing political friction between past and present administrations over the Justice Department's independence ensures that every step of Comey's prosecution will be read through a partisan lens.
When Hunt asked whether people who accepted Biden's pardons were guilty of crimes, Comey declined to say. "I don't know," he repeated, the same answer he gave about whether Biden would have pardoned him.
It is a careful, lawyerly posture. And it may be exactly the right one for a man heading into a federal courtroom. But it also sidesteps a question that the pardon recipients themselves seem reluctant to confront: if accepting a pardon implies guilt, what does that say about everyone who took one?
Comey wants the public to believe he is an innocent man standing on principle. His critics see a former FBI chief whose conduct in office and whose social media judgment brought the current trouble to his own doorstep. A North Carolina courtroom will sort out the legal question.
The political question is already answered. Biden handed out pardons like party favors on his way out the door, to family, to allies, to anyone he thought might draw scrutiny. Comey says he never asked for one. Fine. But the fact that so many others lined up tells you everything about the kind of accountability Biden's team expected to face, and how little faith they had in the innocence they claimed.
