In the final days of his presidency, Donald Trump seriously considered issuing a blanket pardon for all participants in the Jan. 6 riot, according to two people with direct knowledge of the matter.
Another adviser to the former president said Trump asked questions about how participants in the riot might be charged criminally, and how a uniform pardon could provide them protection going forward.
“Is it everybody that had a Trump sign or everybody who walked into the Capitol” who could be pardoned? Trump asked, according to that adviser. “He said, ‘Some people think I should pardon them.’ He thought if he could do it, these people would never have to testify or be deposed.”…
Trump’s consideration of preemptive pardons quickly hit a wall. It was unclear how he could pardon an entire class of people that hadn’t been charged. “You didn’t know who the FBI was going to arrest down the road,” the first adviser said.
At the same time, the White House counsel’s office was forcefully telling Trump what he could not do as president, this person said.
“There was a dangling threat that if he pushed too hard, [White House counsel Pat] Cipollone would leave,” the adviser said. Cipollone declined to comment….
A third adviser who spoke with Trump frequently in the final days before he left office recalled that Trump asked questions about whether he should announce his intention to run again in 2024 before Biden’s inauguration.
“At the time, he wanted to not just be the leader of the party, but flat-out show the world that he’s running again and you’re not going to stop him,” the person said.
But Trump learned that a formal announcement would trigger concerns about campaign finance regulations he’d be forced to comply with immediately after leaving office. According to two advisers, he settled on more general language, like “I’ll be back.”