Donald Trump will likely pardon anyone in his administration who may face prosecution—and possibly himself, a former U.S. pardon attorney says.
Liz Oyer, whom Trump fired last March after she refused to recommend the restoration of Trump-supporting actor Mel Gibson’s gun rights, said the president may have already drafted pardons “in case something should happen to him.”
It is “likely” that the president “will very broadly grant pardons to members of his administration who may have committed crimes in the course of their official duties,” Oyer told The Daily Beast Podcast host Joanna Coles.
As for mass pardons, Trump is no stranger to that; on his first day back in office, he pardoned about 1,500 accused or convicted Jan. 6 rioters.
“Frankly, it would not surprise me if he has already written some of those pardons and signed them and has them stashed in a drawer somewhere, just in case something should happen to him—to make sure that the people who have worked for him in this administration are protected,” Oyer said of the 79-year-old.
Oyer, who previously told The Daily Beast Podcast about the high-priced “pardon economy” for those outside Trump’s administration, added that Trump might not even need to pardon himself, the legality of that move aside.
“There’s not a clear answer under the law as to whether the president can pardon himself,” she explained, referring to the Justice Department stating in a legal opinion a few days before Richard Nixon’s 1974 resignation that the president couldn’t pardon himself. The Supreme Court hasn’t weighed in on it.
Regardless, Oyer said, the court has already granted Trump “such broad immunity” through its 2024 ruling. That opinion, which Trump called a “big win,” appears to have “emboldened” him.
“He knows that he’s not likely to be able to be held accountable criminally for anything he’s doing during his presidency, and therefore he probably won’t need a pardon because of the broad legal immunity that the Supreme Court has already given him,” she said.
Trump asserted in 2018 that he had the “absolute right” to pardon himself, citing “numerous legal scholars,” none of whom he named.
When reached for comment, the White House responded with a boilerplate statement about the Daily Beast along with a dig at former President Joe Biden.
“Anything said on the Daily Beast podcast is equivalent to screaming into the void. No one listens to this Trump Derangement Syndrome therapy session,” spokesperson Abigail Jackson claimed, even as Sunday’s episode of The Daily Beast Podcast has surpassed 200,000 views on YouTube alone.
“And the only pardons anyone should be critical of are from President Autopen, who pardoned and commuted sentences of violent criminals including child killers and mass murderers– and that’s not to mention the proactive pardons he ‘signed’ for his family members like Hunter on his way out the door,” Jackson continued, linking to a story about Biden changing 37 death row sentences to life in prison because he opposes the death penalty.
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