WASHINGTON — President Joe Biden on Monday pardoned Dr. Anthony Fauci, retired Gen. Mark Milley and members of the House committee that investigated the Jan. 6 attack on the Capitol, in an extraordinary use of the powers of the presidency in his final hours to guard against potential “revenge” by the incoming Trump administration.

President Biden issued a preemptive pardon to Gen. Mark Milley on Monday, capping off a presidency marred by the chaotic Afghanistan withdrawal in 2021.

"My family and I are deeply grateful for the President's action today," Milley said in a statement to USA Today provided by a spokesperson.

Trump said Tuesday his administration is in the process of “identifying and removing” more than 1,000 Biden appointees.

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Former President Biden’s preemptive pardon for retired Gen. Mark Milley, the former chair of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, will give the retired military official a shield against any action that President Trump might take against him amid their highly public feud.

The Pentagon on Monday removed the portrait of Mark Milley, the retired Army general and former chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, according to two Reuters witnesses, in a move that happened within two hours of President Donald Trump's inauguration.

A portrait of retired Gen. Mark Milley, a target of President Donald Trump's wrath, disappeared from a Pentagon hallway hours after the inauguration.

But the Biden pardon that will be best remembered is the sweeping pardon he granted in December to his son Hunter, who was facing sentencing in two federal felony cases. That pardon, it turned out, was a prelude to the other Biden family pardons he issued on his final day in office.

It's hard to tell just where retired General Mark Milley's portrait once hung in the Pentagon's prestigious E-ring hallway, alongside all of the former chairmen of the Joint Chiefs of Staff. Painters on Tuesday spread a fresh coat to hide the holes that showed where it had been mounted until its sudden removal following President Donald Trump's Monday inauguration.

Bolton, who frequently stakes out hawkish views about Iran, has had a 24/7 security detail from the Secret Service since December 2021. The Justice Department has said that during that time a member of Iran’s Islamic Revolutionary Guard attempted to hire a hitman in the United States to take him out.