President Donald Trump has said that he may use preemptive pardons to protect government workers and former officials such as Elon Musk.
“We just have to protect those people,” Trump said in an interview on Pod Force One with host Miranda Devine of the New York Post. He commented after Devine brought up threats to arrest Elon Musk and Edward Coristine, who worked for the Department of Government Efficiency that Musk helped establish early in Trump’s second term, among others.
Trump noted that President Joe Biden issued preemptive pardons to nine members of Congress—the full roster of the January 6 Select Committee—among dozens of others, just before leaving office.
Trump was asked if he would do that.
“I would if I needed to,” the president said. “Sure.”
Devine then asked if he would give preemptive pardons to everyone who has worked for him.
“I would not even think about it. I’d do it. I did it for J6,” Trump said, referring to how he pardoned roughly 1,500 people who were charged by the Biden administration over the Jan. 6, 2021, breach of the U.S. Capitol.
During the new interview, which was released on Nov. 2, Devine also referenced recent remarks by Sen. Elissa Slotkin (D-Mich.) and Rep. Jamie Raskin (D-Md.) as Democrats attempt to flip enough seats to take control of Congress.
Slotkin said during an event in Michigan in October that she wanted to focus on, in addition to the president, people who “enabled him.”
“I [don’t] want young people coming out of school to say, ‘Should I go work for the Trump administration? Like, that sounds fun, I might get an opportunity,’” she added. “I want them to be like, ‘Lord, that might be buying myself a ton of problems that I don’t want. And so, let me avoid participating in that.’ I want that deterrence message sent.”
After her comments drew criticism from Trump and others, Slotkin doubled down, saying on CNN, “The truth is that if you commit a criminal act, if you use taxpayer dollars in a way that violates the law, you should be held accountable, no matter who you are.”
Raskin, the top Democrat on the House Judiciary Committee, told news outlets in a recent statement that “the political and financial corruption driving the Trump presidency is a civic emergency” and “Congress has a responsibility to confront all this corruption directly—to expose it and take all steps necessary to crush it as quickly as possible.”
He said during an NBC appearance on Sunday that any blanket pardons Trump issues will apply only in the criminal context, not to civil cases, and only to federal cases, not state proceedings.
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