President Trump said he would pardon White House officials before leaving office if needed, and pointed straight at Joe Biden’s last-minute clemency for allies, family, and political enemies as the precedent Democrats already set.
In a lengthy sit-down with Time magazine, Trump made plain he sees no barrier to protecting administration officials from future probes. The interview took place Monday and was published Thursday.
The New York Post reported Trump’s direct answer when asked about pardons for White House officials before the end of his second term: he would do it.
“Yeah, sure I’d do that,” Trump said.
“Sleepy Joe Biden, he gave pardons to everyone. He gave them to [Dr. Anthony] Fauci. He gave them to this. But you mean I’m not allowed to give them, but Sleepy Joe’s allowed to give them?”
That comparison sits at the center of the exchange. Trump returned to the White House in January 2025. Biden’s final months in office featured a wave of commutations and pre-emptive pardons that covered thousands of convicts, key officials, and family.
During his last two months, Biden commuted sentences and granted clemency to thousands of convicts. Many involved non-violent drug offenses. In his final hours and days, he also signed pre-emptive pardons.
Those covered members of the House Select January 6th Committee, former National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases director Dr. Anthony Fauci, and members of Biden’s own family. Hunter Biden, then the first son, had been convicted of gun and tax felonies. He received a sweeping pardon from his father in December 2024.
That move came after the Biden White House had denied the 46th president would pardon his son. Trump’s team and conservative critics had flagged the gap between those public assurances and the final act.
Trump, shortly after taking office again, issued pardons for around 1,500 people charged in connection with the Jan. 6, 2021, breach of the U.S. Capitol. He has treated that clemency as a corrective to what he calls selective prosecution.
The Time interview landed against a backdrop of Democratic pressure on current and recent Trump officials. Democrats in Congress have called for investigations into former Homeland Security Secretary Kristi Noem. They have also pushed impeachment talk aimed at cabinet officials such as War Secretary Pete Hegseth.
Those efforts are described as likely to intensify if Democrats take the House or Senate in the next Congress. The fear inside Trump circles is straightforward: congressional probes today can become referrals and prosecutions under a future administration.
One of Noem’s top aides, Corey Lewandowski, became a flashpoint last year. A Post source reported him saying he was unconcerned about possible prosecution over allegations he used taxpayer-funded government contracts to enrich himself.
The reported remark was blunt.
“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,” he claimed. The allegations themselves remain unadjudicated in the available record. The episode still shows how quickly pardon talk enters the bloodstream when the opposing party signals investigations.
Trump did not treat the Time session as a friendly chat. He told the reporters they had failed to ask a single positive question.
He said they hadn’t “asked me one f***ing positive question.” He ticked off the pattern he heard: “All of this. What about this? What about that? What about that? What about this? All negative.”
He argued he should receive credit for “fixing the White House” and for having “already won” a war against Venezuela. Those claims sit in the interview as his own assessment of results on his watch.
The larger frame he offered was consistency. If Biden could hand out pre-emptive protection to Fauci, to Jan. 6 committee figures cast as Trump’s political opponents, and to his own son after repeated denials, then a sitting president should be free to shield officials who carried out his agenda.
Trump’s willingness to consider end-of-term pardons for White House officials tracks a hard political lesson. Prosecutions and congressional investigations have become tools of turnover. When one party leaves power, the other often reaches for subpoenas, impeachments, and special counsels.
Biden’s December 2024 pardon of Hunter, paired with the broader final-days clemency list, removed any remaining pretense that such acts stay rare or narrowly tailored. Thousands of commutations in two months, plus pre-emptive cover for high-profile names, rewrote the practical rules.
Trump’s “sure I’d do that” answer treats those rules as already rewritten. He is not inventing a new power. He is stating he will use the same one his predecessor exercised at scale.
No specific list of White House officials under active consideration appeared in the interview excerpts. The statement was categorical rather than name-by-name. That leaves the door open without locking in any single aide.
For voters who watched Biden reverse course on Hunter and then blanket allies on the way out the door, the double standard is the story. One side’s clemency is framed as mercy and justice. The other side’s prospective use of the same tool is framed as scandal.
Trump rejected that split on camera. He put the Biden record on the table and asked why the permission structure should run only one way.
Equal rules for both parties still matter more than selective outrage over who reaches for the pardon pen.
