Former President Joe Biden and his wife Jill left the Capitol after the swearing in of President-elect Donald Trump and moved by helicopter from Washington to the Andrews military base in Maryland, from where they then set off on their way to California. The American news channel CNN reported about it, TASR writes.
The departure of the helicopter with the Bidens on board was watched by the new US Vice President JD Vance and his wife, in addition to Trump and the old First Lady Melania.
According to Politico magazine, the Bidens will move on the presidential plane to California, where Biden’s friend and billionaire Democrat Joe Kiani has a residence in Santa Ynez, Santa Barbara County.
Politico recalled that Biden last traveled to Santa Ynez after his speech at the August 2024 Democratic convention, where he officially dropped the presidential bid in favor of his vice president, Kamala Harris.
Trump and shortly before him Vance were sworn in at the Capitol as the new president and vice president of the United States. While Vance swore on a Bible given to him by his great-grandmother, Trump used the family Bible as well as the one on which Abraham Lincoln took his oath at his inauguration in 1861.
Shortly before his departure from the White House, Biden granted several persons a “preventive pardon”, which should protect them from “Trumpists”.
Grace refers to e.g. General Mark Milley, former chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff of the US Armed Forces, former adviser to the US administration on health and the “face” of the fight against the disease of COVID-19 Anthony Fauci, as well as members of the commission of inquiry into the invasion of the crowd into the Capitol building on January 6, 2021.
After pardoning his son Hunter in December 2024, Biden also pardoned his brother James and his wife Sara on Monday; to his sister Valerie and her husband John Owens; and to his brother Francis.
Biden argued that his family has been “subjected to relentless attacks and threats motivated solely by the desire to harm” him personally. “Unfortunately, I have no reason to believe that these attacks will stop,” Biden explained.
