Acceptance of a presidential pardon carries legal weight. The Supreme Court once observed that accepting a pardon carries an implication of guilt. Former President Joe Biden’s accompanying remark that the grant to Anthony Fauci should not be mistaken for evidence of wrongdoing carries no judicial weight whatsoever. It is, one supposes, the sort of thing one says when the alternative might prove inconvenient.

When Fauci accepted the broad pardon issued in early 2025, he accepted the implication of responsibility. The pardon closed off federal prosecution for any possible offenses linked to his long tenure at the infectious disease agency and his role advising on the national response. What it could not close off are the measurable consequences of policies advanced under that influence. These consequences arrived in the form of lost learning, frayed social skills, several trillion dollars in public spending, and fraud on a scale that still burdens the economy.