Since returning to office last year, President Donald Trump has used his pardon-issuing power to reward friends and allies, campaign donors, and the thousands of supporters who stormed the Capitol during a violent riot after he lost the 2020 election to Joe Biden.
Now, he is reportedly promising pardons to a broad swath of his aides as a way of shielding them from consequences for any potentially illegal acts committed in his service.
According to The Wall Street Journal, Trump has repeatedly promised pardons to administration officials on multiple occasions, including during one recent meeting at which he reportedly said he’d “pardon everyone who has come within 200 feet of the Oval” before he leaves office in January 2029.
The Journal also reported that he’d had a separate conversation with aides in his private dining room during which he’d mused about holding a news conference to announce the mass pardons in the waning days of his administration.
Trump enjoys sweeping immunity from criminal prosecution for any crimes committed in the course of his official duties as president, thanks to a 2024 Supreme Court ruling that arose from one of the two federal criminal cases brought against him by a Department of Justice special counsel during his four years in political exile while Biden was president.
That immunity, however, does not extend to any of his staff. But the president could effectively immunize any of his aides from criminal charges by issuing preemptive pardons that would foreclose the possibility that anyone in his employ could ever be charged with any federal crimes committed on his orders during his remaining three years in the White House.
Such a use of the pardon power would be well within the broad authority granted to the president under a clause of the U.S. Constitution which empowers him to “grant Reprieves and Pardons for Offences against the United States.”
It would also echo some of the last-minute pardons granted by Biden, Trump’s successor and predecessor, in the final days of his term.
In what was perhaps his last official act before leaving office last year, Biden issued sweeping preemptive pardons to members of his family who’d long been the target of attacks from Trump and his allies, including his brother James Biden and sister-in-law Sara Biden, his brother Frank Biden, his sister Valerie Biden Owens, and her husband John Owens.
Biden also granted preemptive pardons to Dr Anthony Fauci, Gen. Mark Milley, and the members of Congress who served on the House committee that investigated the attempted insurrection at the US Capitol on January 6 2021, as well as police officers who testified before the panel and staff members who worked on the committee’s investigation.
But White House Press Secretary Karoline Leavitt characterized Trump’s promise of preemptive pardons are an example of his sense of humor, telling the Journal in a statement that the newspaper “should learn to take a joke” while adding the caveat that Trump’s pardon power remains “absolute.”
During his first term, he often floated the idea of pardoning aides when they suggested to him that various actions he was asking of them might land them in legal jeopardy.
At one point, he suggested to immigration officials that he would grant them pardons if they illegally blocked migrants from entering the country to claim asylum, though he never followed through on the idea and people who served in his administration have claimed he made the comments in jest.
In the wake of the January 6, 2021 riot that stemmed directly from his attempts to overturn his 2020 election loss to Biden, Trump considered — but rejected — issuing mass pardons to his staff and campaign aides to head off potential prosecutions by the incoming Democratic administration, though he later told aides that he regretted not doing so.
When he returned to the White House last January after winning the 2024 election, one of his first acts was to grant a mass pardon to 1,500 of the rioters who’d been charged or convicted of crimes committed during the Capitol attack.
In the 445 days since, he has issued grants of clemency to over 1,600 people in total, many of whom have been political allies, campaign donors, or people connected to allies or donors, including people who were prosecuted or convicted within his first and second terms, including an entertainment executive accused of public corruption who he pardoned only four months after he was indicted for conspiracy.
He granted a full pardon to ex-Honduran president Juan Orlando Hernández, who the Justice Department once said was at the center of the “largest and most violent drug-trafficking conspiracies in the world.”
That pardon, which drew bipartisan outrage, not only raised questions about the motivations behind his administration’s lethal campaign against alleged drug traffickers but also had the effect of erasing a case once prosecuted by Emil Bove, his former criminal defense attorney — now a federal judge — who was once a federal prosecutor leading the case against Hernández.
Another pardon went to Binance founder and cryptocurrency billionaire Changpeng Zhao, who pleaded guilty in 2023 to what prosecutors called “willful violations of anti-money laundering” laws with his leadership at Binance, the world’s largest cryptocurrency exchange.
The president said that he was told by officials in his administration that Zhao was a victim of a “witch hunt” under former President Joe Biden. Zhao, meanwhile, has maintained a stake with Binance, which has done business with World Liberty Financial, the cryptocurrency company owned by Trump’s family.
Alex Woodward contributed reporting
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