“At the end of the president’s term, could Donald Trump legally give a blanket pardon for himself and everybody in his Cabinet because of fear of future prosecutions when he is out of office? So, even if crimes are discovered after his presidency, he pardons anyone and everyone?” — Michael
Hi Michael,
First, I’ll answer the question as it pertains to everyone else, and then I’ll answer as it pertains to Trump himself.
The president has the power to pardon everyone else for any federal crime they may have committed by the time he issues the pardon — meaning, it must be backward-looking. It’s not a get-out-of-jail-free card going forward.
Right before Joe Biden left office, he issued broad pardons to potential Trump targets — such as Dr. Anthony Fauci, whose clemency grant on Jan. 19, 2025, says he’s pardoned for “any offenses against the United States which he may have committed or taken part in during the period from January 1, 2014, through the date of this pardon arising from or in any manner related to his service as Director of the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases, as a member of the White House Coronavirus Task Force or the White House COVID-19 Response Team, or as Chief Medical Advisor to the President.”
Trump could issue even broader pardons that aren’t limited by, for example, that time duration of only going back to 2014. But on top of being backward-looking — meaning that Fauci is on his own for any criminality that postdates the Biden presidency — presidential pardons are also limited to federal crimes. That issue has arisen in Trump’s second term with his attempted pardons of his allies for state crimes, over which the president lacks power. The Constitution gives presidents the pardon power for “Offences against the United States,” meaning federal offenses (hence the “against the United States” language in the Fauci pardon).
If a pardon is granted for any and all federal crimes previously committed, then it wouldn’t matter if the crimes are only discovered later. What matters is what the pardon says.
Turning to Trump himself, the question of whether a president can pardon himself has been debated but never tested. Though he has claimed he has the right to do so, he didn’t try in his first term. If he does so before leaving office for good this time, then one way to test the self-pardon’s validity would be for him to be charged with a crime that’s covered by the pardon; then the courts would decide whether the pardon provides a winning defense.
Of course, when it comes to potential future prosecutions against Trump (or any former president), keep in mind the Supreme Court’s 2024 ruling on presidential immunity in Trump v. United States. Depending on what the hypothetical future charge against Trump would be, a prosecution could be difficult to pursue if it stems from his time in office. So even if the courts were to rule that Trump can’t pardon himself, thus putting him in a special category of being the one person he can’t pardon, he’s already in a special category of protection by virtue of having been president.
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