President Trump said he would have no problem pardoning White House officials before leaving office, pointing straight at Joe Biden’s mass clemency for allies and family.
In a lengthy sit-down with Time magazine, Trump made clear he sees no reason to leave his own team exposed after what the last Democratic president did on the way out the door.
The New York Post reported that when asked about pardoning White House officials before the end of his second term, Trump answered without hesitation.
“Yeah, sure I’d do that,” he said.
He framed the choice as basic fairness, not special treatment. Biden, he argued, handed out clemency freely, so why should a Republican president be held to a different standard?
Trump went straight at the record of the 46th president.
“Sleepy Joe Biden, he gave pardons to everyone.”
He named names.
“He gave them to [Dr. Anthony] Fauci.”
And he drove the double standard home:
“He gave them to this. But you mean I’m not allowed to give them, but Sleepy Joe’s allowed to give them?”
The background is not subtle. In his final two months in office, Biden commuted sentences and granted clemency to thousands of convicts, many for non-violent drug offenses. He also signed pre-emptive pardons for political figures who had not been charged, including members of the House Select January 6th Committee, Fauci, and members of the Biden family.
In December 2024, Biden granted a sweeping pardon to his son Hunter Biden, who had been convicted of gun and tax felonies, after the Biden White House had denied he would do so.
Trump had blasted those final acts before he returned to the White House in January 2025. Now, with Democrats already calling for probes of his own Cabinet, he is signaling he will not leave loyal officials unprotected.
The political pressure is already visible. Democrats in Congress have called for investigations into former Homeland Security Secretary Kristi Noem and for impeachment of Cabinet officials such as War Secretary Pete Hegseth.
Those efforts are likely to intensify if Democrats take the House or Senate in the next Congress. The Post noted that such investigations could form the basis of prosecutions under a future administration.
That is the climate in which Trump’s pardon answer landed. He is not waiting for a finished case file. He is answering a pattern he says Biden already normalized.
Trump has used the pardon power before in this term. Shortly after returning to office in January 2025, he pardoned around 1,500 people charged with crimes tied to the Jan. 6, 2021, breach of the U.S. Capitol.
A separate thread involves Corey Lewandowski, one of Noem’s top aides. The Post previously reported, via a source, that Lewandowski said last year he was not worried about prosecution over allegations he used taxpayer-funded government contracts to enrich himself.
“I’m not worried. I do whatever the f, I want. DJT will pardon me.”
Lewandowski later denied it.
“Never said that. Never asked for a pardon and have no reason to receive one.”
Trump’s Time remarks did not name Lewandowski. They did make the broader point: if Biden could shield allies and relatives, Trump will not accept a one-way rule that only binds his side.
The pardon exchange sat inside a longer, heated interview. Trump unloaded on the Time reporters for what he called a purely hostile line of questioning.
He said they had not “asked me one f, ing positive question,” and ran through the tone he heard in the room:
“All of this. What about this? What about that? What about that? What about this? All negative.”
He also said he “should be given credit for fixing the White House” and for having “already won” a war against Venezuela, claims he offered as part of the same pushback against wall-to-wall negative framing.
The interview was conducted Monday and published Thursday. The Washington dateline story put the clemency answer in the middle of that larger fight over how his second term is covered and judged.
Trump’s position is straightforward. Biden used clemency at scale on the way out, for convicts, for uncharged political targets, and for his own son. Democrats are already teeing up investigations and impeachment talk against Trump’s team. Asked whether he would protect White House officials before his term ends, the president said yes.
Voters can decide whether that is prudence or politics. What they cannot do is pretend the last administration left the pardon power untouched.
If Democrats built a system that pardons its own and prosecutes the other side, they should not act shocked when a Republican president refuses to play the sucker.
