The White House is making its first moves as Democrats appear likely to take back the House of Representatives after the Nov. 3 election: mass pardons.
According to the Washington Sun, lawyers are considering issuing pardons for all White House junior staffers likely to be called before Congress.
“Because these people are lunatics on the, on the left — I don’t want to see people that work for me go through years of nonsense, hire lawyers and everything else, all for nothing,” Trump ranted earlier this month.
The lawyers hope it could help protect lower-ranking staff, but Congress doesn’t prosecute anyone; the Justice Department does. Trump’s former personal lawyer, Todd Blanche, is in charge of the Justice Department.
Still, far-right organizations like the Heritage Foundation and American Moment are asking the White House to either prepare some pardons or at least put funding in place for the legal fees that staff are likely to need as the lawsuits begin.
“A pardon for all junior administration personnel is viewed as unlikely, one source said, but the president could issue blanket pardons for all employees involved in particular policy areas, such as deportations, war or trade,” the Sun reported on Saturday. “Trump has previously said he would be interested in pardoning some administration officials, but the discussions happening now would apply to a far greater number of White House staff than has been previously reported.”
Pardoning them for possible crimes also suggests the White House believes crimes occurred. Meanwhile, the president can’t pardon someone for crimes they haven’t committed yet. So, he would likely have to issue the same pardon again at the end of his term.
Earlier this month, Sen. Elissa Slotkin (D-Mich.) suggested that young people who want to work for Trump think ahead about whether they have adequate funding for lawyers.
Corruption in government is quickly becoming one of the biggest issues on the campaign trail. Blanche’s recent move was to prosecute longtime Trump aide Corey Lewandowski for some of the deals he made while overseeing the Department of Homeland Security as Secretary Kristi Noem’s special government employee.
Reuters reported in September that Trump has given clemency to roughly 1,700 people as of June.
The report cited law professor and clemency expert Mark Osler, who explained that widespread pardons for political appointees and staff would be “a new development in American history.”
“It’s a despoilment of what is supposed to be a tool for mercy and national reconciliation being used as a battlefield tool in political wars,” Osler said. “Certainly, the Biden administration did this and blazed the trail, and now it’s potentially being followed in much greater numbers by Trump. I don’t think anyone would conceive that the framers would hope it would be used this way.”
Even if pardoned, Congress can still compel staff to testify.