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Can anyone stop Trump’s preemptive pardon-palooza?

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by Kim Wehle, opinion contributor - 04/15/26 9:30 AM ET

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by Kim Wehle, opinion contributor - 04/15/26 9:30 AM ET

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AP Photo/Alex Brandon

In response to last week’s report that President Trump has pledged to “pardon everyone who has come within 200 feet of the Oval Office,” White House press secretary Karoline Leavitt remarked, “The Wall Street Journal should learn to take a joke. However, the President’s pardon power is absolute.”

Pardons are supposed to operate as a means of bestowing individual mercy and fostering national healing — not to immunize crimes committed in the Oval Office. So is Leavitt right? Could Trump lawfully pre-pardon anyone who may have committed crimes at his behest?

Also, note that the general statute of limitations for federal crimes is five years, so any first-term crimes are now stale.

Leavitt has a point. Thanks to his friendly majority on the Supreme Court, Trump is now likely immune from prosecution for many crimes conceivably committed in connection with his pardons. That is because in Trump v. U.S., the court manufactured a doctrine of criminal immunity for presidents. This effectively killed off former Special Counsel Jack Smith’s indictment over Trump’s alleged role in inciting the Jan. 6, 2021, attack on the U.S. Capitol.

In that ruling, the majority deemed the pardon power “core” to the president’s constitutional powers and thus absolutely immune from legal scrutiny — possibly even if a pardon is issued in exchange for a bribe.

It should therefore come as no surprise that, since his return to office, Trump has felt comfortable abusing the Article II pardon power beyond recognition — doling out pardons for political loyalty, pay-to-play corruption, and even state prosecutions, over which he has no pardon authority. He has also used pardons to reward those who violently rioted in his name — an unprecedented maneuver that has since unleashed a range of disturbing criminal behavior on the public.

Couple presidential immunity with the court’s view that pardons are a “core” presidential responsibility and thus legally inscrutable — a notion likewise announced for the first time in that case — and the Supreme Court effectively greenlighted an organized crime spree in the Oval Office.

Trump’s quip about pre-pardoning the lot of his aides and enablers — a potential signal that they should keep doing what they are told without fear of legal consequences — was utterly predictable.

That said, it is important to underscore that Supreme Court caselaw involving the pardon power is extremely sparse, mostly dating back to the Civil War. So there is room for future prosecutors to maneuver here. That is partly because the only people who have easily demonstrated standing to challenge pardons in have been recipients unhappy about their pardons for some reason. The general public cannot get before a judge to complain about corrupt pardons.

If Trump follows through on his threatened pre-pardon-palooza, and one of the recipients is later indicted under a future president, that person would undoubtedly move to dismiss the case, citing Trump’s preemptive pardon. The judge — and ultimately, perhaps the Supreme Court — would then be in a position to decide whether the pardon holds up or not.

None of this would affect state prosecutions, however. Georgia’s criminal racketeering case against Trump and his allies, as well as other state prosecutions arising from the 2020 election shenanigans, showed that tampering with voting equipment, proffering false slates of presidential electors, and other election subversion measures violate state criminal law, so his enablers should beware.

Financial crimes have state-law versions too, including for fraud, theft, tax evasion, and securities law violations. States also have criminal laws banning witness tampering, evidence destruction, and obstruction relating to state criminal investigations and grand juries. States also criminalize bribery.

Of course, any future state prosecutions would hinge on the existence of state governments willing to uphold law over party politics. Nor would every state have legal jurisdiction over crimes committed in Washington, D.C., for example. But if the goal in this moment is (as it should be) deterring Trump acolytes from risking their personal liberty out of loyalty to him, the threat of state criminal liability should be taken seriously now.

Presidential pardons do not, at least as it stands, touch civil liability for wrongdoing, either, so money damages for executing unlawful presidential orders or programs are still on the table. The