Trump Promises Mass Pardons to Staff Before Leaving Office
In a recent meeting, the president said he would pardon those within 200 feet of the Oval Office, say people familiar with the remarks
President
Trump has repeatedly promised his top administration officials pardons before he leaves office, according to people who have heard his comments.
“I’ll pardon everyone who has come within 200 feet of the Oval,” Trump said in a recent meeting to laughs, according to people with knowledge of the comments. That radius appears to be expanding as the president repeats the line. Another person who met with Trump earlier this year said the president quipped about pardoning anyone who had come within 10 feet.
In one conversation with advisers in the dining room next to the Oval Office last year, Trump said he would host a news conference and announce mass pardons before he left office, some of the people said. The people said they weren’t aware of specific pardons being offered to specific people for specific acts.
The unconditional power to pardon is one of the most sweeping powers offered to the presidency. This term, Trump has wielded clemency far differently than any other president,
dispensing some 1,600 grants to date. Many have gone to allies and donors, or
those who had hired them, coming after a social pull-aside or
a round of golf. Some have received bipartisan criticism, including one to
a crypto billionaire whose company boosted Trump’s own digital-currency company, and another to a
former Honduran president convicted of conspiring with cartels to ship cocaine to the U.S. In Trump’s first term, he signed fewer than 250 pardons and commutations.
The president has repeatedly raised the specter of pardons with White House aides and other administration officials, particularly when staff have suggested they could face prosecution or congressional investigations over decisions, people familiar with the comments said. Trump is known to joke about matters that he later seriously pursues, and the frequent references have led some aides to believe he is serious about the pardons, too.
Trump aides have worried about losing control of the House of Representatives to Democrats in the November elections. Democrats have said they might investigate the president for a range of issues, including his control over the Justice Department, alleged malfeasance at the Department of Homeland Security and the president’s pardons themselves. The president has discussed how to thwart those potential inquiries, advisers said. The Justice Department ultimately would make the decision on whether to charge someone for not adhering to a congressional subpoena.
Several aides said Trump raises the pardons so regularly that some of his advisers now laugh about it.
“The Wall Street Journal should learn to take a joke, however, the President’s pardon power is absolute,” Karoline Leavitt, the White House press secretary, said.
Trump’s liberal use of the pardon power follows former President Joe Biden’s
sweeping and pre-emptive
end-of-term grants to multiple top officials and family members who he said could face scrutiny from the Justice Department under Trump. Those included his son Hunter Biden and Dr. Anthony Fauci, the longtime leader of the National Institutes of Health.
Former Biden aides said they understood why Biden granted them, but that they served as a norm-breaking precedent for Trump to exploit.
“By testing the boundaries of the pardon power, Biden cracked the door open and we can’t now complain about Donald Trump walking through it, even if he blows it wide open,” said Michael LaRosa, a former communications aide to Biden.
Trump weighed pardoning White House officials after the Jan. 6 attack on the U.S. Capitol at the end of his first term, according to former administration officials, but didn’t ultimately do so. He later told advisers that he should have issued the pardons, people who talked to him said. Some 1,500 of Trump’s second-term pardons are for defendants charged in connection with Jan. 6.
After leaving office, federal and state prosecutors charged Trump in four different criminal cases. He was convicted of 34 felony counts in New York and
sentenced to no punishment, but wouldn’t be able to pardon himself because those are state crimes. Prosecutors dismissed the others last year. Advisers describe a president who believes he was unfairly targeted by the Justice Department and wants to do whatever is possible to protect himself and his inner circle from scrutiny in the future.
His former press secretary Stephanie Grisham said Trump didn’t regularly raise pardoning aides in his first administration. At one point, Grisham said, she told him she was in trouble for violating the Hatch Act, which limits political activities from government officials in their official capacity.
Trump, she said, jokingly told her not to worry about it. “He said, ‘Who cares? You know who is the boss of the Hatch Act, and I’ll pardon you.’”
Grisham said she wasn’t aware of Trump actually offering to pardon any White House official in his first term. At one point in that term, Trump did muse to immigration officials that he would pardon them if they directed border agents to physically deny migrants from entering the country, according to people who heard his comments. Former officials said they didn’t believe it was a serious offer.
Liz Oyer, a pardon attorney at the Justice Department before being fired during Trump’s second term, said the offers could spur Cabinet officials and administration officials to behave more aggressively.
“It seems like he previewed many times his intent to use the pardon power to bail out those who carry out his agenda faithfully,” Oyer said.
