In his 2023 book, “Government Gangsters,” Kash Patel, whom Donald Trump says he intends to nominate as the next director of the F.B.I., named 60 people whom he classified as “members of the executive branch deep state” — a “cabal of unelected tyrants” who posed “the most dangerous threat to our democracy.” Mr. Patel has since said that the incoming Trump administration must deal with the “deep state,” be it “criminally or civilly.”

The White House is reportedly considering whether President Biden should issue blanket pardons for many of Mr. Trump’s perceived enemies, such as the people on Mr. Patel’s list. The goal would be to pre-emptively protect them from groundless and vengeful prosecution.

I’m on Mr. Patel’s list. I don’t want a pardon.

I can’t speak for anyone else on the list, but I would hope that none of them would want a pardon, either. If we broke the law, we should be charged and convicted. If we didn’t break the law, we should be willing to show that we trust the fairness of the justice system that so many of us have defended. And we shouldn’t give permission to future presidents to pardon political allies who may commit real crimes on their behalf.

This past spring, arguing in a brief to the Supreme Court that Mr. Trump shouldn’t have immunity from prosecution, Mr. Biden’s Justice Department reminded the justices that “the executive branch and the criminal justice system contain strong safeguards against groundless prosecutions.” Many former government lawyers — including a number of us on Mr. Patel’s list — were quick to publicly agree, stressing how dangerous and unnecessary such a grant of blanket immunity would be.

We emphasized the importance of the rule of law and the trust we had in the jury system. Yet now that the shoe is on the other foot, suddenly we would accept total immunity from prosecution for anything we did during our time in government?

Mr. Biden has made clear that he is comfortable with that sort of duplicity. Despite having his Justice Department argue against immunity for Mr. Trump, he pardoned his son Hunter on the unconvincing ground that his son was “selectively and unfairly prosecuted” by a special counsel appointed by the president’s own attorney general. But Mr. Biden’s hypocrisy should not be ours.

We are having trouble retrieving the article content.

Please enable JavaScript in your browser settings.

Thank you for your patience while we verify access. If you are in Reader mode please exit and log into your Times account, or subscribe for all of The Times.

Thank you for your patience while we verify access.

Already a subscriber? Log in.

Want all of The Times? Subscribe.7xm