Donald Trump has reportedly promised to pardon virtually his entire White House staff before leaving office, and the radius keeps growing. What started as a quip about anyone within 10 feet of the Oval Office has ballooned into something considerably more sweeping.
"I'll pardon everyone who has come within 200 feet of the Oval," Trump allegedly said to a room of aides in a recent meeting, drawing laughs, according to a report from the Wall Street Journal.
The report claims that staffers who raise the possibility of congressional investigations or prosecutions into policy decisions tend to hear about whether preemptive pardons are on the table.
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.
They certainly have reason to be worried that Democrats will attempt to weaponize their powers to launch endless investigations. They’ve repeatedly promised to do so. In response to Trump’s immigration enforcement policies, House Minority Leader Hakeem Jeffries not only promised to prosecute ICE agents and Trump administration officials.
None of this happened in a vacuum. Trump reportedly weighed pardoning White House officials in the chaotic days after January 6, 2021, but decided against it. He later told advisers he regretted that decision. Democrats viciously went after Trump allies, rioters, and even Trump himself.
Critics will certainly want to treat this as a constitutional crisis in progress. But before the outrage fully crystallizes, it's worth noting who opened the door. Joe Biden issued sweeping preemptive pardons for top officials and family members at the end of his term - including his family, Dr. Anthony Fauci, and the entire January 6 Select Committee - citing the possibility of DOJ scrutiny under Trump. Michael LaRosa, a former communications aide to Biden, had the intellectual honesty to say the quiet part out loud, saying, "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."
The White House, however, is dismissing the Wall Street Journal’s report.
“The Wall Street Journal should learn to take a joke,” White House Press Secretary Karoline Leavitt said in a statement. “However, the President’s pardon power is absolute,” she added.
While the White House clearly doesn’t want to confirm the story, there’s reason to believe that even if Trump was joking, there’s a serious point behind it—and Joe Biden effectively gave him cover to act on it. The informal norms governing the pardon power took a significant hit during Biden’s final weeks in office. Trump declined to go that far when he left office in 2021, but with Democrats openly signaling plans to target his officials if they regain power, he may now feel compelled to act to protect them from what he sees as a weaponized justice system.