President Biden’s staff is debating whether he should issue blanket pardons for a swath of President-elect Donald J. Trump’s perceived enemies to protect them from the “retribution” he has threatened after he takes office, according to people familiar with the discussion.

The idea would be to pre-emptively extend executive clemency to a list of current and former government officials for any possible crimes over a period of years, effectively short-circuiting the next president’s promised campaign of reprisals.

White House officials do not believe the potential recipients have actually committed crimes, but they have grown increasingly worried that Mr. Trump’s selections for top Justice Department positions indicate that he will follow through on his repeated vows to seek revenge. Even an investigation that results in no charges could drag on for months or years, costing those people hundreds of thousands of dollars in legal fees and crippling their career prospects.

The discussion of blanket pardons, reported earlier by Politico, remains primarily at a staff level although Mr. Biden has talked about it with senior members of the team, according to the people familiar with the matter, who spoke on the condition of anonymity to describe internal deliberations. It comes after Mr. Biden pardoned his son Hunter to spare him from prison on gun and tax charges.

Karine Jean-Pierre, the White House press secretary, declined to discuss blanket pardons during a briefing on Friday, although she said Mr. Biden was considering possible executive clemency actions more generally before leaving office. “Certainly, the president is reviewing next steps and there will be more to come,” she said.

Mr. Biden in effect previewed the approach with his son’s pardon, wiping away not just the counts he was actually convicted of but any crimes he “may have committed or taken part in” since 2014. That presumably will forestall Mr. Trump’s Justice Department from going after Hunter Biden on any allegations that did not merit charges by the prosecutor who has investigated him since Mr. Trump’s first term.

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