Former White House adviser Kellyanne Conway says Donald Trump offered her a blanket pardon after he lost the presidential elections in 2020.
In her book Here’s the Deal: A Memoir, due to be released on Tuesday, the former counselor to the White Hous chronicles her personal and political journey.
While the book takes aim at many targets, including Mr Trump’s son-in-law Jared Kushner, it does little to criticise the former president, reported The Washington Post which has run a number of excerpts from the book.
In the book, Ms Conway recalls sitting in the Oval Office with the former president, who reflects that, without Twitter, he would not have been elected.
“True enough, but as I reminded him, with respect to social media, ‘Make sure it doesn’t get you unelected’,”she wrote.
She also wrote about his shock in losing the 2020 election to Joe Biden.
“Trump was more shocked to lose in 2020, I think, than he was to win in 2016,” she writes in the book.
Mr Trump, during the end of his tenure, had a discussion on clemency and pardons with her and offered her one.
“Do you want one?” Mr Trump reportedly asked her.
“Do you know something, I don’t,” Ms Conway says she replied. “Why would I need a pardon?”
“Because they go after everyone, honey. It doesn’t matter,” Mr Trump said, according to the book.
Ms Conway says the conversation ended with her “politely declin[ing]”.
Ms Conway also wrote that Mr Trump told her at a 2021 dinner at Mar-a-Lago that she had “made history” and “we’ll all be back” at the White House.
During his final hours as president Mr Trump issued a slew of 143 pardons and commutations of sentence to friends and allies as he prepared to reluctantly hand over power to his Democratic successor.
This included granting clemency to his allies, including Steve Bannon, Roger Stone, Paul Manafort and Michael Flynn.
