President Donald Trump issued a cryptic warning on Wednesday, telling Sean Hannity that President Joe Biden should have pardoned himself.
Trump gave the Fox News star his first Oval Office interview since being sworn in on Monday.
Hannity asked Trump for his thoughts on Biden's decision to issue a last-minute preemptive pardon to some of the Democrat's family members and some of the Republican president's political enemies.
“And you know what's funny, maybe sad, is that he didn't pardon himself,” Trump noted.
“And look, it all had to do with him,” Trump also offered.
Trump has said he wants “retribution” for his political enemies because he believes Biden's Justice Department was weaponized against him and other Republicans because he was accused of crimes in four separate cases in the years after his presidency.
The Justice Department is supposed to act independently of the White House.
During the sit-down, Trump complained that he was not issuing a blanket pardon to himself and his allies.
President Donald Trump issued a cryptic warning on Wednesday, telling Sean Hannity that President Joe Biden should have pardoned himself
“I was given the opportunity, they said sir, would you pardon everyone, including yourself. “I said I'm not going to pardon anyone, we didn't do anything wrong,” Trump said.
He noted that some of his people were then “suffering.”
“You had Bannon put in jail, you had Peter Navarro put in jail, you had people suffering,” Trump said.
Steve Bannon, Trump's 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 subpoena seeking his testimony about the Jan. 6 attack on the Capitol.
Navarro was the first former Trump White House official to be jailed for contempt of Congress.
He was released from prison in July after also serving a four-month sentence.
Before leaving office, Trump pardoned several 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 Republicans in the House of Representatives would investigate Biden's pardon, which also included members of the House select committee on January 6.
While the two Republicans who served on that committee are no longer in Congress: former representatives. Liz Cheney and Adam Kinzinger – a number of Democrats are still in the House of Representatives.
Biden's blanket pardon was also extended to his siblings and their spouses, former Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff Mark Milley and Dr. Anthony Fauci, who led the COVID-19 response in both the Trump and Biden administrations. government, and which has been under fire ever since. by the political right for lockdowns in the COVID era.
