Donald Trump will hand out pardons to everyone who has worked in his administration, down to his most junior White House staffers, if Democrats seize Congress on Tuesday.
'I would if I needed to. Sure,' the president told the New York Post's Miranda Devine. The president noted that the pardons would stretch to every last person on his payroll.
'I did it for J6,' Trump said, pointing to the roughly 1,500 people he pardoned over the 2021 attack on the Capitol on the first day of his second term.
A Democratic majority in either chamber can put his aides under oath, seize their emails and make them answer in public for the rest of his term.
Senior Democrats have already set out the targets, including Trump's children, the Epstein files, ICE, and the corporations the administration has done deals with.
Meanwhile, Democrat Senator Elissa Slotkin said last month she wants 'signature cases' built against the staff who carried out Trump's orders.
Previously, the Supreme Court handed the president immunity, but handed nothing to the aides who work for him.
Some Democrats want more than hearings, with former labor secretary Robert Reich urging Democrats to lay the groundwork for nationalizing SpaceX. Others lawmakers want to investigate DOGE staffers who slashed budgets for federal agencies.
Donald Trump will hand out pardons to everyone who has worked in his administration, down to his most junior White House staffers, if Democrats seize Congress on Tuesday
Previously, the Supreme Court handed the president immunity, but handed nothing to the aides who work for him
A pardon will not stop any of it because the clemency power reaches prosecutions and cannot block a congressional investigation.
It also reaches federal crimes only, leaving state prosecutors free to charge the same conduct, civil liability intact and the impeachment process beyond the president's reach.
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A pardon can even be turned against the man who accepts it, because a witness who can no longer be prosecuted loses the Fifth Amendment protection that lets him refuse to answer, and can be made to talk or face contempt.
Anything he lies about once he is compelled is a brand new crime, and no pardon signed today can touch it.
The nerves are already showing inside the building, where the White House counsel's office has taken on more lawyers and outside firms have offered to pitch in free.
Junior officials are quietly buying legal insurance against bills expected to run into the millions, and Trump has walled off millions more from his MAGA Inc. super PAC to cover the lawyers.
Trump is expected to claim executive privilege over virtually any communication involving himself.
The usual answer to defiance, a criminal contempt referral, would need to be enforced by Trump's own Justice Department.
'I did it for J6,' Trump said, pointing to the roughly 1,500 people he pardoned over the 2021 attack on the Capitol on the first day of his second term
Asked whether he was in the Democrats' sights himself, the president who is preparing to pardon everyone around him said he did not know.
Trump dismissed the polls as rigged, pointed at the size of his rally crowds, and said the country would find out Tuesday night.
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