One of the U.S. president’s greatest powers is the pardon power. We were reminded over the weekend of how Donald Trump would wield it if he returns to the White House.
While railing against the congressional committee that investigated the Jan. 6 attack on the Capitol, the Republican presidential nominee said to applause at a Wisconsin rally on Saturday:
The moment we win, we will rapidly review the cases of every political prisoner unjustly victimized by the Harris regime. And I will sign their pardons on Day One.
To be sure, this isn’t the first time that Trump has promised clemency for his supporters who’ve been charged with and convicted of a range of federal offenses in the effort to thwart the congressional certification of the 2020 election that Trump lost to Joe Biden. But as Election Day approaches and Trump prepares to debate Democratic nominee Kamala Harris on Tuesday, it’s good to know where the sides stand.
Indeed, if he’s elected, Trump may also try to pardon himself in his own two federal cases, one of which likewise involves Jan. 6. He has pleaded not guilty in all four of his criminal prosecutions, with his so-called hush money trial in New York ending in guilty verdicts on all counts in May (though it’s to be determined whether those verdicts will stand in light of the Supreme Court’s immunity ruling).
But as Election Day approaches and Trump prepares to debate Democratic nominee Kamala Harris on Tuesday, it’s good to know where the sides stand.
The former president’s remarks over the weekend come amid a recent report about a Trump clemency recipient who subsequently faced domestic violence charges.
And while granting wholesale pardons to Jan. 6 defendants would break new ground, it would be in keeping with the spirit of Trump’s first term. As I previously wrote, that term featured him doling out pardons and commutations “to a murderers’ row of assorted cronies and military members accused of war crimes.” As the American people weigh the two main candidates this election season, and sometimes even wonder what difference it makes in choosing one mainstream party over the other, clemency is one of the areas in which the choice between the Republican and Democratic candidates is stark — implicating, as it does with Jan. 6, the largest criminal probe in the Justice Department’s history. Subscribe to the Deadline: Legal Newsletter for updates and expert analysis on the top legal stories. The newsletter will return to its regular weekly schedule when the Supreme Court’s next term kicks off in October.
Jordan Rubin is the Deadline: Legal Blog writer. He was a prosecutor for the New York County District Attorney’s Office in Manhattan and is the author of “Bizarro," a book about the secret war on synthetic drugs. Before he joined MS NOW, he was a legal reporter for Bloomberg Law.
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