President Donald Trump has repeatedly floated the idea of issuing sweeping pardons to members of his administration before his term ends, Newsweek reported, citing a Wall Street Journal account based on people familiar with his private comments. The discussions have ranged from offhand jokes to more serious conversations about shielding officials from potential legal exposure and congressional investigations.
White House Press Secretary Karoline Leavitt responded to the report with a statement that split the difference between dismissal and assertion:
"The Wall Street Journal should learn to take a joke, however, the President's pardon power is absolute."
That framing, joke first, constitutional authority second, captures the dynamic at work. Trump's comments have surfaced often enough inside the White House that some aides have begun to question whether the president is laying the groundwork for sweeping preemptive clemency, the Journal reported. And the constitutional text Leavitt invoked is not in dispute. Article II grants the president the "Power to grant Reprieves and Pardons for Offences against the United States, except in Cases of Impeachment."
The question is not whether Trump can do it. The question is whether he will, and what it would mean.
In meetings with aides and advisers, Trump both joked and spoke more seriously about granting clemency to officials who could face legal jeopardy or congressional scrutiny, the Journal reported. During one meeting, he said he would "pardon everyone who has come within 200 feet of the Oval," according to people with knowledge of the comments.
In a separate conversation, Trump said he would announce mass pardons during a news conference before leaving office. On another occasion, he quipped about pardoning anyone who had come within 10 feet.
The Journal's sources were unaware of any specific pardons being offered to any one individual. That distinction matters. There is a wide gap between a president musing aloud, even repeatedly, and a president directing White House counsel to draft pardon documents. But the frequency of the remarks, and the fact that they have moved beyond humor into what the Journal described as more serious discussions, has drawn attention.
Newsmax reported that the discussions include anticipatory or blanket pardons for aides and allies who could face future investigations or prosecutions. Trump and his allies reportedly view such pardons as protection against what they describe as politically motivated investigations expected after his presidency.
Any honest discussion of preemptive presidential pardons has to start with what Joe Biden did on his way out the door. As he prepared to leave office, Biden granted preemptive pardons to numerous people, including family members, Dr. Anthony Fauci, General Mark Milley, and members of Congress who served on the House Select Committee to Investigate the January 6th Attack on the United States Capitol.
Trump and other Republicans were sharply critical of those blanket pardons at the time. Democrats said the pardons were not reflective of wrongdoing but reflected concerns that Trump's Justice Department would investigate committee members and others as part of what they called "retribution."
Trump went further than criticism. In a Truth Social post, he declared Biden's pardons "VOID, VACANT, AND OF NO FURTHER FORCE OR EFFECT," arguing that they were signed by autopen rather than by Biden personally. He wrote that Biden "did not know anything about them" and that "the people that did may have committed a crime." He added that members of the select committee "should fully understand that they are subject to investigation at the highest level."
That post is worth rereading in light of the current report. If Biden's preemptive pardons were illegitimate, as Trump argued, then the legal and political framework for Trump's own potential preemptive pardons becomes a subject of intense scrutiny. The president's allies would say the two situations are not comparable. Biden, they argue, shielded people from accountability for genuine misconduct. Trump, in their view, would be protecting loyal officials from politically motivated post-presidency legal exposure.
That distinction may be persuasive to many conservatives. But the mechanism is the same: a president using Article II authority to inoculate allies against future prosecution before any charges exist.
Democrats have signaled plans to investigate the Trump administration if they retake control of the House of Representatives after the midterm elections. That prospect, not any existing indictment or criminal referral, appears to be the backdrop for the pardon discussions. Officials who carried out Trump's executive agenda could face subpoenas, contempt proceedings, or referrals to a future Democratic-controlled Justice Department.
Trump has aggressively used his pardon power during his second term. He has granted multiple pardons in recent clemency waves, and the scope of those pardons has itself become a legal battleground. In one notable case, a suspect in the D.C. pipe bomb investigation argued that Trump's January 6th pardon should cover his case, a sign of how broadly some defendants are reading the president's clemency actions.
At the end of his first term, Trump announced 143 clemency actions in his final hours in office, 73 pardons and 70 commutations, Breitbart reported at the time. High-profile recipients included Steve Bannon, Lil Wayne, Kodak Black, Elliott Broidy, and former Detroit Mayor Kwame Kilpatrick. Notably, Trump did not issue preemptive pardons for himself, his family members, Rudy Giuliani, or White House staff during that round.
That restraint in January 2021 makes the current discussion more significant. If Trump is now considering what he declined to do four years ago, the political calculus has shifted, driven in part by Biden's own pardon spree and in part by the threat of Democratic investigations.
Leavitt's statement was blunt and accurate on the law: the president's pardon power is absolute, with the sole exception of impeachment cases. No court approval is required. No congressional vote. No disclosure obligation beyond the act itself. The Framers gave the executive this authority deliberately, and every president since George Washington has used it.
Legal experts cited by Newsmax noted that anticipatory or blanket pardons, pardons issued before charges are filed, would be highly unusual but not without precedent. Gerald Ford pardoned Richard Nixon before any indictment. Biden's preemptive pardons for Fauci, Milley, and the January 6th committee members covered conduct that had not resulted in criminal charges.
The broader executive posture of the Trump administration, from firing a court-appointed U.S. attorney hours after he took the oath to cutting federal funding for sanctuary jurisdictions, has made clear that this White House views executive authority expansively. A broad pardon action would fit that pattern.
Much remains unclear. The Journal's report did not identify which administration members, if any, were under specific consideration. No pardon documents have been drafted, as far as public reporting indicates. The timing of any potential announcement, whether before the midterms, at the end of the term, or not at all, is unknown.
It is also unclear whether Trump's public argument that Biden's pardons are void would complicate his own legal position if he pursued the same mechanism. The autopen argument has not been tested in court. If a future administration or Congress challenged Trump-issued preemptive pardons, the Biden precedent would be central to the litigation.
There is also the political question. Biden's preemptive pardons drew fierce criticism from the right, and rightly so. They looked like an outgoing president shielding political allies from accountability. If Trump does the same, he hands Democrats the same talking point, wrapped in the same constitutional authority, aimed at the same public skepticism of self-dealing.
The difference, conservatives will argue, is context. Biden's pardons protected people from investigation into an administration that presided over policy failures from the border to the economy. Trump's would protect people who carried out policies that voters endorsed in 2024. Whether that distinction holds depends on who is doing the judging, and who controls the House after the midterms.
The pardon power exists for a reason. It is a check on prosecutorial overreach, a tool of mercy, and a recognition that the law can be applied unjustly. Every president uses it. Every president's pardons draw criticism.
But preemptive mass pardons, whether issued by Biden or contemplated by Trump, are a different animal. They do not correct a specific injustice. They do not free a wrongly convicted person. They create a blanket of legal immunity for an entire class of officials, shielding them from accountability before anyone has determined whether accountability is warranted.
Biden set this precedent. He did it brazenly, on his way out the door, for allies who faced no charges and claimed no wrongdoing. Republicans were right to call it what it was. The question now is whether the right response to a bad precedent is to match it, or to hold a higher standard.
The Constitution says the president can. The voters will decide whether he should.
