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By Jennifer Radcliffe
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President Donald Trump left the door open to pardons for White House staff and administration officials, telling reporters on Saturday that he would be "allowed" to grant them despite insisting he has not given the idea serious thought.
"Well, I haven't thought of it, but I will tell you, it would be very unfair to go through what we went through for four years with the corrupt weaponization that took place," Trump said when asked about pardons for administration personnel. "So, in light of what [former President Joe] Biden did—as you know, Biden shielded many people...Certainly, I haven't thought about it, but certainly I'd be allowed to."
Trump's comments came after The Washington Sun on Saturday reported that White House attorneys are evaluating whether to issue preemptive pardons for lower-level administration officials who helped carry out the president's agenda. According to the report, a blanket pardon for all junior staffers is viewed as unlikely, though discussions have included the possibility of broader protections for officials involved in specific policy areas such as immigration, trade and military matters.
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In April, the Wall Street Journal reported that the president was considering issuing broad pardons for his staff. At the time, then-White House press secretary Karoline Leavitt said that the newspaper "should learn to take a joke, however, the president’s pardon power is absolute."
Newsweek reached out to the White House for comment. The White House has not publicly confirmed that it is considering broad preemptive pardons for administration officials.
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What Trump Has Said
Trump has repeatedly defended using pardons to protect people who work for him and cited former President Joe Biden's preemptive pardons as precedent. He called it the president's most important tool.
In an interview earlier this month with Newsmax, Trump argued that Biden's pardons demonstrated the breadth of presidential clemency powers.
"I don't want to see people that work for me go through years of nonsense, hire lawyers, and everything else," Trump said. "I'm allowed to pardon."
The president also suggested administration officials could face politically motivated investigations after he leaves office.
"I don't want to see my people go through," he said. "At the end of two and a half years, we will have done things that nobody's ever done."
On Saturday, Trump appeared to go a step further when discussing investigations of administration personnel.
"I certainly don't want to see innocent people go through hell and lose all their money," Trump said before turning to White House aide Margo Martin, who was standing nearby.
"Margo, you're not going to have to worry about it, OK?" he added.
Trump did not explicitly mention a pardon in those remarks or explain precisely what he meant by the comment to Martin.
Who Trump Has Pardoned Previously
Trump has also used clemency powers on behalf of political allies and supporters. During his first term, he pardoned former national security adviser Michael Flynn, longtime adviser Roger Stone and former White House strategist Steve Bannon. Many of those decisions drew criticism from opponents who argued Trump was using the pardon power to reward loyalists, while supporters said the recipients had been unfairly targeted by prosecutors.
During his second term, Trump has already made extensive use of his power of presidential pardon, including granting clemency to about 1,500 individuals convicted in connection with the January 6, 2021, attack on the U.S. Capitol.
Last October, Trump commuted former New York Republican Representative George Santos' fraud sentence. He had been less than three months into his sentence, having pleaded guilty in August 2024 to multiple counts of wire fraud, aggravated identity theft, campaign finance violations, and other financial crimes.
Trump also pardoned former Honduran President Juan Orlando Hernández, who was serving 45 years after being convicted of moving 400 tons of cocaine to the United States. Some critics contended the pardon was politically motivated.
When asked at the time by reporters why he issued the pardon, Trump said, "The people of Honduras really thought he was set up, and it was a terrible thing. They basically said he was a drug dealer because he was the president of the country. And they said it was a Biden administration set-up. And I looked at the facts and I agreed with them.”
The president has at times argued that his pardons are granted in cases where he believes the sentence was too harsh or the crime was misapplied to the individuals in question.
How Previous Presidents Have Used the Pardon Power
The president's pardon power is outlined in Article II of the U.S. Constitution.
Previous presidents have also used the pardon power in controversial ways, including Gerald Ford's pardon of Richard Nixon, Bill Clinton's pardon of financier Marc Rich and Biden's end-of-term clemency decisions.
Biden granted preemptive pardons to numerous people and family members, as well as to Dr. Anthony Fauci, General Mark Milley and members of Congress who served on the House select committee that investigated the Capitol riot.
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Who Has Joe Biden Pardoned? Full List
Critics Raise Concerns About Overreach
Legal experts say that a broad preemptive pardon covering categories of White House or administration staff would represent a significant expansion of how the power has traditionally been used. Critics of expansive pardons argue that presidential clemency is not a catch-all form of legal immunity.
Janai Nelson, president and director-counsel of the NAACP Legal Defense Fund, wrote on X on Saturday that presidential pardons "do not provide absolute immunity." She noted that recipients can still face state and local prosecutions, civil liability, professional sanctions and some forms of international legal exposure.
Representative Mike Levin, a California Democrat, called for a constitutional amendment to limit presidential pardon powers and bar self-pardons, saying the restriction should apply regardless of which party controls the White House.
The proposal was first introduced to Congress last January and referred to the House Committee on the Judiciary in the same month. It was sponsored by Tennessee Democrat Steve Cohen and the other co-sponsors are California Democrat Ted Lieu, Oregon Democrat Suzanne Bonamici and Georgia Democrat Henry Johnson.
Levin said "presidents of both parties have misused" pardoning powers but raised particular concerns about Trump's use of pardons.
Calvin Jillson, a politics professor at Southern Methodist University in Texas, previously told Newsweek that while it was "correct to decry the pardon power" it had "virtually no chance" of passing because passing constitutional amendments is so rare.
A constitutional amendment would need approval from a two-thirds majority in both the House and Senate to go ahead.
Newsweek’s reporters and editors used Martyn, our AI assistant, to produce this story. Learn more about Martyn here. Contact Newsweek editors for this story: Anthony Murray and Gabe Whisnant.
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