As he prepared to leave the White House, Biden also commuted the life sentence of indigenous activist Leonard Peltier, who was serving a life sentence for the 1975 murder of two FBI agents. Peltier will transition to house arrest, Biden said in a statement.

On Monday morning, a Trump spokesperson has called Biden’s pre-emptive pardons “the greatest attack on America’s justice system in history”.

“With the stroke of a pen, he (Biden) unilaterally shielded a group of political cronies from the scales of justice,” Taylor Budowich, Trump’s incoming deputy chief of staff for communications and personnel said in a post on X.

“This is yet another dangerous and unreversible erosion of American norms.”

Biden also issued a pre-emptive pardon to Mark Milley, a former chairman of the Join Chiefs of Staff, who last year described Trump as “fascist to the core”.

Biden’s statement said that the pardons should “not be mistaken as an acknowledgment” that any of those covered “engaged in any wrongdoing”.

Democrats had warned the outgoing president against such action. Adam Schiff, a Senator for California, said Biden could set a “precedent” for “each president hereafter on their way out the door giving out a broad category of pardons”.

Dr Fauci told US media that he “truly appreciated” Biden for taking action, adding that the possibility of prosecution had created “immeasurable and intolerable distress” on his family.

“Let me be perfectly clear, I have committed no crime and there are no possible grounds for any allegation or threat of criminal investigation or prosecution of me,” he added.

Gen Milley, 66, thanked Biden in a statement and stated that he did not wish to spend the rest of his life “fighting those who unjustly might seek retribution for perceived slights”.

“I do not want to put my family, my friends, and those with whom I served through the resulting distraction, expense, and anxiety,” he said.

Biden’s pardons cover all members of the House Select Committee that investigated the 6 January riot, as well as their staff and the officers who testified.

The committee was led by Democrat Bennie Thompson of Mississippi and former Republican Congresswoman Liz Cheney of Wyoming, who later campaigned with Trump’s opponent, Vice-President Kamala Harris.

Trump in December backed a call for the FBI to investigate Cheney over her role in leading Congress’s probe.