President Donald Trump’s offhand talk of pardoning everyone around him has moved from punchline to legal homework inside the White House.
White House attorneys are reviewing whether to hand out sweeping pardons to lower-ranking staffers, The Washington Sun reported Saturday, citing two people familiar with the discussion. One source said a pardon covering every junior official is unlikely, but Trump could instead issue blanket clemency for everyone involved in certain policy areas, such as deportations, military action or trade.
The scope would dwarf anything previously reported. Trump has openly mused about clemency for his top aides, but the talks now underway could reach the thousands of rank-and-file employees who have carried out his agenda.
Influential conservative groups, including the Heritage Foundation and American Moment, have urged the White House counsel’s office to either draft pardons or set aside money to cover legal bills for junior staffers facing potential criminal cases, congressional investigations or lawsuits, The Sun reported.
That push picked up steam after Sen. Elissa Slotkin (D-MI) suggested earlier this month that congressional probes of Trump officials should give young Republicans pause before signing on for the administration’s last two years.
“After listening to Elissa Slotkin threatening to go after young people who joined the Trump administration, President Trump should issue very broad preemptive pardons for anyone who worked for him or in his orbit,” Mike Davis, president of the conservative legal group Article III Project, told The Sun.
Trump himself has laid the groundwork. “I don’t want to see people that work for me go through years of nonsense, hire lawyers and everything else, all for nothing,” he told Newsmax this month, dismissing his critics as “lunatics” on the left.
The Wall Street Journal reported in April that Trump had joked about pardoning “everyone who has come within 200 feet of the Oval,” prompting then-press secretary Karoline Leavitt to tell The Journal to “learn to take a joke.”
The White House and the Heritage Foundation did not immediately respond to The Sun’s requests for comment.
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