Donald Trump repeatedly mentioned sweeping pardons for his White House staff, according to a report published Thursday, including one remark that he would pardon everyone who had come within 200 feet of the Oval Office. In a recent meeting, Trump said, “I’ll pardon everyone who has come within 200 feet of the Oval,” people with knowledge of the comments told the Journal.
Those same people said Trump also told aides he planned to pardon anyone who had come within 10 feet of the executive residence. In another White House meeting, he allegedly said he would hold a news conference and announce mass pardons before leaving office, though he did not do so in the final days of his first term. The comments surfaced as staffers raised worries that they could face prosecution or congressional investigations over decisions made in office, according to the report.
The remarks carry added weight because Trump has already used the pardon power aggressively in his second term. On day one, he wiped away criminal charges for about 1,600 Jan. 6 rioters. He later pardoned Binance founder Changpeng Zhao after Zhao pleaded guilty in 2023 to violating U.S. anti-money laundering laws, and he pardoned former Honduran president Juan Orlando Hernández, whom the Justice Department said was at the center of one of the “largest and most violent drug-trafficking conspiracies in the world.”
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The discussion also lands in a political moment shaped by the pardons issued by Joe Biden in early 2025 to his immediate family, Dr. Anthony Fauci, Gen. Mark Milley and lawmakers on the House committee that investigated the Jan. 6 attack on the U.S. Capitol. Trump’s reported broadening of the idea is another sign that clemency has become a regular tool in the current political fight, not just a rare presidential escape hatch.
The tension in the report is that the White House is brushing off the comments as a joke even as the pardon power has already been used on people far outside the usual frame. White House press secretary Karoline Leavitt said, “The should learn to take a joke, however, the President’s pardon power is absolute,” but the line does not answer why Trump was discussing mass pardons with aides who were worried about legal exposure. Some former Trump advisers, including Steve Bannon and Peter Navarro, were later sentenced to federal prison, which only sharpens the stakes around who in Trump’s orbit thinks clemency may be needed next.
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What is not settled is whether Trump was joking, telegraphing a real plan or doing both at once. The reporting suggests he is willing to keep testing the edges of presidential clemency, and the people around him have every reason to take the next comment seriously.
