Donald Trump is reportedly planning to pardon his closest advisers en masse at the end of his second presidency, according to a recent report that says he joked about extending clemency to anyone who came within 200 feet of the Oval Office.
In the meeting described in the report, Trump said, “I’ll pardon everyone who has come within 200 feet of the Oval [Office],” a line attributed to an anonymous source. Another source said he used an even tighter cutoff in an earlier conversation, telling people he would pardon anyone who came within 10ft of the presidential office.
The remarks matter because they fit a pattern that has defined Trump’s return to power. Since starting his second presidency, he has granted clemency to more than 1,800 people, including 1,500 people on his first day in office who were involved in the 6 January 2021 US Capitol attack. He also pardoned Changpeng Zhao in October and earlier this year granted clemency to former congressman George Santos, commuting his seven-year prison sentence after Santos served three months behind bars.
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Trump’s broad use of the pardon power has often been framed by his allies as a rejection of the legal battles that shadowed him after Joe Biden defeated him in 2020, when the Biden administration sought to prosecute him for alleged offenses before he returned to power. The new comments suggest that the end of Trump’s second term could bring another round of sweeping clemency, this time aimed not at strangers from a political riot or business case, but at people who spent years inside his orbit.
There is also a split between the joke and the signal. White House press secretary Karoline Leavitt said, “The should learn to take a joke. However, the president’s pardon power is absolute.” But other sources said Trump has already floated holding a news conference at the end of his term to announce mass pardons, leaving open whether the comments were offhand banter, a warning, or a preview of what he plans to do when his presidency winds down.
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Trump’s own words about Santos captured the logic of his clemency politics. “He lied like hell,” he said, “But he was 100% for Trump.” That is the through line in the reporting: loyalty has become a greater currency than restraint, and if Trump follows through, the final act of his second presidency could be a public display of how far he is willing to stretch the pardon power for the people closest to him.
