Make New York Post a Preferred Source WASHINGTON — President Trump said in an interview published Thursday that he’d have no issue pardoning White House officials before the end of his second term.
“Yeah, sure I’d do that,” the president told Time magazine during a lengthy sitdown Monday, later adding: “Sleepy Joe Biden, he gave pardons to everyone.”
“He gave them to [Dr. Anthony] Fauci,” Trump later groused. “He gave them to this. But you mean I’m not allowed to give them, but Sleepy Joe’s allowed to give them?”
Before returning to the White House in January 2025, Trump was harshly critical of former President Joe Biden’s final acts of clemency.
Biden commuted sentences and otherwise granted clemency to thousands of convicts — many of whom committed non-violent drug offenses — during his final two months in office.
He also signed pre-emptive pardons for Trump’s political enemies like the members of the House Select January 6th Committee; Fauci, the former National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases director — and even members of the 46th president’s family who hadn’t been charged with crimes.
Then-first son Hunter Biden, who had been convicted of gun and tax felonies, also received a sweeping pardon from his father in December 2024 — despite the Biden White House denying the 46th president would do so.
Democrats in Congress have already called for investigations into Trump’s ex-Homeland Security Secretary Kristi Noem, as well as the impeachment of cabinet officials such as War Secretary Pete Hegseth.
One of Noem’s top aides, Corey Lewandowski, had spilled last year that he wasn’t “worried” about being prosecuted for allegations that he used taxpayer-funded government contracts to enrich himself — because he expected a pardon would be forthcoming, The Post reported.
“I’m not worried. I do whatever the f— I want. DJT will pardon me,” Lewandowski told one of The Post’s sources.
Lewandowski later claimed: “Never said that. Never asked for a pardon and have no reason to receive one.”
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Some of the Democratic investigations — which are likely to ramp up if their party takes the House or Senate in the next Congress — could form the basis of prosecutions under a future administration.
Shortly after entering office, Trump pardoned around 1,500 people charged with crimes related to the Jan. 6, 2021, breach of the US Capitol.
Elsewhere in the interview, the president exploded at the Time magazine reporters shortly after broaching the topic of clemency, claiming they hadn’t “asked me one f—ing positive question.”
“All of this. What about this? What about that? What about that? What about this? All negative,” he fumed, adding that he “should be given credit for fixing the White House” and having “already won” a war against Venezuela.
