Rep. Thomas Massie, a Republican who represents Northern Kentucky, said in a post on social media site X that Biden should have pardoned Wikileaks founder Julian Assange instead. Assange in 2019 pleaded guilty to a violation of the Espionage Act for publishing a trove of classified information about the U.S. military in Iraq and Afghanistan.

Some Democrats fear that Trump will use the pardon to criticize the justice system and bolster his own efforts to remake it.

Already reeling from their November defeat at the polls, Democrats now are grappling with President Joe Biden's pardoning of his son for a federal felony conviction after the party spent years slammin