The NPR Politics Podcast - How President Trump's Pardons Are Challenging Political Norms

Episode Date: June 3, 2025

The federal pardon power is one area where presidents have unchecked authority. President Trump is using that authority in ways that challenge long-standing political norms.This episode: voting correspondent Miles Parks, justice correspondent Carrie Johnson, and senior national political correspondent Mara Liasson. This podcast was produced by Bria Suggs and edited by Lexie Schapitl. Our executive producer is Muthoni Muturi.Listen to every episode of the NPR Politics Podcast sponsor-free, unlock access to bonus episodes with more from the NPR Politics team, and support public media when you sign up for The NPR Politics Podcast+ at plus.npr.org/politics.Learn more about sponsor message choices: podcastchoices.com/adchoicesNPR Privacy Policy

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I'm Miles Parks. I cover voting. I'm Kerry Johnson. I cover the Justice Department. And I'm Mara Eliason, senior national political correspondent. And today on the podcast, we are talking about presidential pardons. President Trump issued 19 of them just last month, and he's using them in ways that challenge long-standing political norms. Mara, let's start there. Can you just talk for people who have not been tracking

every single pardon that the president has made this term, what are some of the notable pardons Trump has made in his second term and what makes them stand out to you? Well, first of all, just to back up for a minute, the pardon power is something that a president has exclusively, it's relatively unfettered, Congress has no role at all, there's no judicial review.

So this is one of those powers that Trump likes to exercise because it's a presidential power and he believes in a very strong executive that's basically stronger than the other two branches. So the biggest pardon that he made, of course, was on his very first day in office, he pardoned 1500 and something January 6 rioters who broke into the Capitol in an effort to overturn the 2020 election. Some of them were violent. They beat police officers on the steps of the Capitol. He actually ran on a campaign promise to pardon them, and he did.

More recently, he pardoned a Virginia sheriff convicted of bribery. He pardoned a man convicted of tax fraud whose mother was a major Trump donor And these pardons send a pretty clear message if you are a MAGA supporter if you commit violence on Trump's behalf He will pardon you Well, I should note presidential pardons are not new they are as old as the country is and even former President Biden issued Clemency, I believe, to more than 4,000 people. What is it about Trump's pardons that I guess are so different here? Well, they're not different in kind. There have been political pardons before. Bill Clinton pardoned Mark Rich, whose ex-wife had been a big Democratic donor. Other presidents have

pardoned their family members or political associates. But Trump has taken this to a whole new level. He has pardoned a lot of white collar criminals. He's determined these pardons seemingly by how strongly these people support him, whether it's financially or just being a strong MAGA voice. And in that sense, he's done it much more blatantly and transparently. Other pardons by presidents happened at the end of their terms at the very last day sometimes, because political pardons get a lot of blowback.

But Trump, as I said, campaigned on a promise to pardon the January 6 rioters, and he's done it very much out in the open. One of the things that really seems different to me with the Trump pardons is that even though we've had some really unseemly pardons in the past, I remember some in the Clinton era, some certainly in the George W. Bush era, some of the people Trump has pardoned in his first term have gone on to break the law again, and some of them are back in prison, or at least under

federal indictment again. The other thing is that Trump has basically made no secret of the fact that his ears and eyes are open all the time for pardon. So even though Ed Martin, who used to be the acting U.S. attorney in D.C. this year, has now become the pardon attorney, it really feels like Donald Trump is the pardon attorney.S. attorney in D.C. this year, has now become the pardon attorney. It really feels like Donald Trump is the pardon attorney. He's the guy making the call, and he's the guy that people are making appeals to. In fact, I've heard from lawyers in town and across the country that the market for pardons, for finding lawyers who advertise that they can basically try to get you a pardon. It's a very hot market right now.

It depends on ties and connections to people in the Trump White House to Trump himself. That seems more amped up and more active than it has been in the past. And also, there is a playbook for this. After Scott Jenkins, the Culpepper Virginia sheriff convicted of bribery, was pardoned by the president, Ed Martin, the pardons attorney at the Department of Justice, posted, no MAGA left behind. He was referring to the fact that Jenkins had been a long time, very ardent supporter of the president. And he was sending a message to Trump's base that if you stick with Trump, he will have

your back even if you commit a crime. I mean, it's interesting to me, there's not necessarily pulling data on every single one of those pardons, but there is a lot of data on how people feel about the January 6 pardons because that was so many people and so early in the presidency. And one thing that has become very clear is especially for people who were violent to police officers, for instance, at the Capitol, the vast majority of people are not in support of pardoning those people. Is there any indication that that matters to President Trump

as he's thinking moving forward? Not at all. I mean, first of all, he has gotten absolutely no blowback from Republicans in Congress. Remember, after President Biden pardoned his son Hunter and gave some other preemptive pardons to other family members,

Democrats were angry about that and they were vocal and public about it. You haven't heard anything from Republicans about the Trump pardons and that shows you the kind of rock-solid hold he has on his party. I don't think any president has had a more firm grip on his party than Trump does. So I don't think that there there were certainly no consequences for Trump himself when he was convicted and I don't think there's any political consequences for Trump with the fact that the majority of Americans think he shouldn't have pardoned the violent January 6th defendants. You know, I covered both of those major seditious conspiracy trials of key members of the Proud

Boys and the Oath Keepers. And many of those defendants got commutations. In other words, their prison sentences were made shorter or truncated altogether as opposed to a full pardon. And some of those guys are actually still lobbying the White House for a full and complete pardon. So in fact, they're incentivized and pretty regularly are criticizing leaders of the Justice Department and appealing to Trump to actually get more from him, not less. Wow. Okay, let's leave it there for a quick break. We'll be back with more in just a minute.

World news is important, but it can feel far away, not on the State of the World podcast. With journalists around the world, you'll hear firsthand the effects of US trade actions in Canada and China, and meet a Mexican street sweeper who became a pop star. We don't go around the world, we're already there. Listen to the State of the World podcast from NPR every weekday. And we're back. So, Kerry, I'm wondering about how these pardons play into Trump's relationship with the Department of Justice, because the president cannot issue state-level pardons.

These are for federal crimes. So in essence, he is questioning or undermining, or whatever word you wanna use, the work of people who now work under him, right? Miles, even if the senior leaders of the Justice Department wanted to go a different way than Trump has, and there's very little evidence that they do. Remember, Pam Bondi, the attorney general, Todd Blanch, the deputy attorney general,

and Amal Bové, the deputy or right-hand man to Todd Blanch, they're all personal defense lawyers to Donald Trump in previous years and recent years, Trump is running most of the policy and most of the practice from the White House. So there's minimal separation, if any, between what the DOJ wants and what Donald Trump wants. Also, some of these cases actually started during Trump's first term. Remember that on January 6, 2021, Trump was still the president of the United States. And almost immediately after the siege on the Capitol, the Justice Department, including the then acting US attorney in DC, was appointed by Donald Trump. All those January 6 investigations, generally speaking, started under Trump. And on his first day in office in the new term,

all of that stuff virtually went away. And that really shows you the kind of incredible impact, just like a 180-degree turn that Trump has had on Washington. You know, and I will point out also that Trump pretty famously made an appearance at the DOJ this year. He stood in the great hall of the Justice Department, which is a very rich and storied part of the DOJ. And he basically laid out a list of grievances about prosecutors and other people. And he also seemed to suggest that he had a really firm idea of what he wanted to do this time around. And that was coming out of his mouth, in his mind, and not somebody from the federal society

or somebody else who had been around Washington a really long time and around establishment Washington. Well, Carrie, talk about why that's so significant. I mean, there's a big norm that he just busted through when he showed up at the Justice Department. Like, why is that so significant? Danielle Pletka Well, Obama did that too, Mara. But the thing that was different about Trump is that he talks about ongoing investigations by the Justice Department. And that has not been something that's happened in the past. In

fact, it just happened in recent days. Trump got a question at the White House about Diddy, who's currently on trial in the Southern District of New York, federal prosecutors under Donald Trump. So Trump got a question about whether he would actually pardon Diddy in the middle of this trial, and here's what he said. First of all, I look at what's happening, and I haven't been watching it too closely, although it's certainly getting a lot of coverage. I haven't seen him. I haven't spoken to him in years. He used to really like me a lot, but I think when I ran for politics,

he sort of that relationship busted up from what I read. I don't know. He didn't tell me that, but I'd read some little bit nasty statements and the paper all of a sudden. So Trump finally got to the point of saying, if they like me or they don't like me, if they help me or they hurt me, it won't have impact on the pardon decision. I'm sure he'd like me and I'm sure other people would like me, but it wouldn't be

as good for our country. As we said, our country is doing really well because of what we're doing. So I can't, it's not a popularity contest. So I don't know, I would certainly look at the facts. If I think somebody was mistreated, whether they like me or don't like me, it wouldn't have any impact on me. I will say that since that time, other musicians who don't like Diddy have been talking in the press about lobbying Trump the other way around.

So I don't think we heard the end of that story for sure. Well that gets to this idea that it does feel like they're starting to become a formula in terms of thinking about how to request. I mean, Trump talks so openly about pardons. It feels like you mentioned, Kerry, that there's this kind of cottage industry of lawyers who are pushing this stuff. I mean, can you talk about how it just feels like there's now a formula in a way there wasn't on how to lobby for a pardon? Kerry Smedley You know, Mark can talk to this too, but I think at the end of the Bill Clinton

administration, it was a bit of a free for all and everybody was trying to get in the door at the Justice Department and the White House too, to try to make their case for a last ditch pardon on the way out the door. One of the challenges is that inside the Justice Department for over a hundred years, there's been a pardon apparatus where people actually submit paperwork and they answer questions and the Justice Department goes back to the people who prosecuted people accused of crimes and takes the weight and the measure of those prosecutors. And all

of that gets up to the highest levels of the Justice Department and then the package of papers is transmitted to the White House. And that's the way a president typically is supposed to make a decision about a pardon. That has totally gone out the window. Many, if not all, of the pardons we've seen so far from Trump have not used this process at all. And so that means that everybody and their brother can knock on the door at the White House and try to get a reception from Trump. Danielle Pletka And they try to do it using Trump's own playbook.

You know, Bob Menendez, the Democratic, former Democratic senator from New Jersey who was convicted, he has been saying, I am a victim of the Biden Justice Department translation, just like Trump was. So he's trying to paint himself as a victim just the way that Trump thinks of himself as a victim of Biden's Justice Department. And so that's the playbook for a pardon.

I don't think he's going to pardon Bob Menendez, but Bob Menendez knows what to say. All right, well, we are seemingly getting more pardons every month, so we will keep watching with you both. But let's leave it there for today. I'm Miles Parks. I cover voting.

I'm Kerry Johnson. I cover the Justice Department. And I'm Mara Eliason, Senior National Political Correspondent. And thank you for listening to the MPR Politics Podcast.