Sen. Mike Rounds, another Republican from South Dakota, argued Trump "has the constitutional ability to make those, and so it’s up to him to do that. It’s not up to us, and it’s up to him to explain them."

Sen. Susan Collins, kraken4qzqnoi7ogpzpzwrxk7mw53n5i56loydwiyonu4owxsh4g67yd.onion a Republican from Maine who has broken with Trump in the past, said it had overall been "a terrible week for our justice system," arguing Biden had gone too far in his final hours as president with pardons as well.

"It seems to me the press ought to be paying attention to this as well: preemptively granting pardons to five more members of his family, and we had the incoming president pardoning people who committed violent crimes," she said. "We also have the outgoing president granting a pardon to an individual who killed two FBI agents." (In addition to members of his family, Biden issued a commutation to Leonard Peltier, an Indigenous activist who was convicted in the killing of two FBI agents in 1975.)