Joe Biden wanted you to believe his last-minute pardon spree on January 20, 2025, was an act of selfless protection for loyal public servants and family members under siege from the incoming Trump administration.
New reporting on Dr. Anthony Fauci's pardon blows that story to pieces.
It turns out Fauci didn't sit back and receive a gift from a grateful and cautious Joe Biden. He asked for it. He pushed for it. His lawyers hounded the White House for it right up until the literal final hours of the Biden presidency. Does that sound like the behavior of an innocent man being shielded out of generosity? Not to me. To me, it sounds like the behavior of a man who knew exactly what he might be facing and wanted out before the door slammed shut.
Independent journalist Nick Shirley got the goods straight from U.S. Pardon Attorney Edward R. Martin Jr., who confirmed that Fauci's legal team was in active contact with Biden's staff, repeatedly asking whether the pardon was actually coming. Martin said email exchanges show the lawyers' anxiety in real time, and that the pardon didn't land until the morning of January 20, just hours before Donald Trump retook the Oval Office.
"Fauci immediately had his lawyers say I accept the pardon, and sent that in," Martin said. "So they were very aware they needed that, and they wanted it."
🚨 According to the current Pardon Attorney of the US, Anthony Fauci was begging for a pardon literally minutes before the change of powers on January 20th.
— Nick shirley (@nickshirleyy) June 19, 2026
On the morning of the inauguration Fauci was emailing the Biden Administration for a pardon. What crimes did Fauci commit? https://t.co/igzrtBNNrl pic.twitter.com/9DoNftx6p5
Of course, we knew that Biden's people were churning out pardons and commutations with an autopen, essentially mass-producing get-out-of-jail-free cards on a conveyor belt.
Of course, there was one exception.
"The only signature on pardons that you see with a wet pen is Hunter Biden, which was signed at Thanksgiving; all the rest are autopen." Fauci's pardon was just another item on the assembly line, except Fauci wasn't a passive recipient. He was banging on the door, asking for it.
I wonder who else begged for one.
Biden, of course, dressed the whole thing up in noble language. "Our nation relies on dedicated, selfless public servants every day. They are the lifeblood of our democracy," he said at the time. "Yet alarmingly, public servants have been subjected to ongoing threats and intimidation for faithfully discharging their duties." Fine words. Except they don't match reality. Fauci wasn't a bystander caught in some imagined Trump revenge tour. He was the one driving the process, worried enough about his own legal exposure to lawyer up and lobby for protection before the clock ran out.
Why was Fauci worried? It likely has to do with the bombshell that Director of National Intelligence Tulsi Gabbard just dropped.
"Before the COVID pandemic, Dr. Fauci, as head of the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases, provided millions in U.S. taxpayer dollars to fund dangerous gain of function research on bat coronaviruses at the Wuhan Institute of Virology, work which is now widely viewed as the source of the unintentional lab leak that sparked the pandemic," Gabbard said in a video posted to X.
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Gabbard said Fauci pressured intelligence officials to twist their findings and steer them away from the lab-leak theory altogether. "These documents expose Fauci's direct role in influencing and manipulating IC assessments on COVID 19 and how Fauci lied to Congress in 2024 when under oath, he denied knowledge of or participation in discussions with intelligence officials about viral research.”
Remember how Fauci spent years positioning himself as the unimpeachable voice of science? What a laugh, right? Obviously he knew he wasn’t in the right if, in his final days in power, he was scrambling for legal cover for his actions. And, of course, Biden handed him that cover under the guise of compassion. Gabbard's revelations now make clear what that pardon was really shielding: a pattern of pressure, manipulation, and alleged perjury before Congress.
History won't remember Fauci as America's doctor. It will remember him as the man who needed a pardon to avoid answering for what he did.
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