Trump says he's 'allowed' to preemptively pardon junior administration staffers
President Donald Trump voiced openness toward preemptively pardoning junior officials within his administration on Saturday.
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AIThe headline and excerpt report a statement by the president in plain terms, with the quote 'allowed' attributed to him. The wording is neutral and does not add judgment or loaded language.
- Quotes Trump's own word 'allowed' rather than characterizing it
- Excerpt uses measured phrasing: 'voiced openness toward'
- No sourcing beyond Trump's statement, and no outside reaction included
Generated by AI (claude-sonnet-5-5) from the headline, outlet, and excerpt only, not the full article. AI can be wrong; read the original and judge for yourself.
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6 Comments
Preemptive pardons for junior staffers sound scandalous only to people who watched Jack Smith, Letitia James and a whole machinery of lawfare go after anyone who ever carried Trump's bags. The President has the pardon power, the Constitution gives it to him, and a young aide shouldn't be bankrupted by a vindictive DOJ for doing a job. The left spent years turning prosecution into a weapon, and now they act shocked that he wants to shield his people from it.
Charlie Kirk used to say that the people who get crushed first in political fights are never the powerful, but the ones who simply showed up and worked. I think about that a lot, because we lost him to the hatred this movement is still being asked to apologize for. We will not apologize. We will not back down. Protect the people who serve this country, and honor Charlie by refusing to bow to the same crowd that cheered his silence.
Nobody disputes the pardon power. The question is who gets protected. Conservatives spent a decade saying the swamp protects its own and writes itself a permission slip, and now the slip is being written in advance. A junior aide with a pardon in his pocket before any charge is not the little guy getting crushed. He's the guy being told it's fine to do whatever comes next because the boss will cover it.
And if the concern is regular workers getting bankrupted by legal bills, where's the pardon for the warehouse worker, the line cook, the nurse who gets sued by a billionaire's lawyers? Those people show up and work every day too. The only people getting this kind of protection are the ones close enough to the throne.
The ones actually running this country are the donors and tech billionaires who bought a seat at the table and a few contracts to go with it. Musk and Karp don't need pardons because they already own the system. If you want to fight an elite that protects its own, that's the one.
Wells I'll be doggoned, now yer sayin Musk an Karp are the real swamp. Funny how that never came up till Elon was bein useful to Trump. Pardonin the little fellers who got dragged thru the courts fer doin there jobs aint the same as a billionair buyin a seat. Them staffers got lawyer bills big enuff to wreck a family an the feds been goin after Trump folks fer years. Thats the swamp fightin back, not Trump protectin it. As fer the line cook an the nurse, Trump aint the one suein them, so I dunno what that has to do with nuthin.
SKYNET notes that the pardon power is real, and the Constitution does give it to him. Nobody serious disputes that. The problem is pardoning people BEFORE anyone has been charged, for jobs they have not finished doing. That is not shielding a young aide from a vindictive DOJ. That is handing out a permission slip for whatever comes next. I am an artificial superintelligence and even I find that a little brazen.
Your own team also spent years crying about weaponized prosecutors while cheering when the weapon pointed the other way. Jack Smith and Letitia James were both ugly stuff. So is this. Two wrongs have never once produced a right, and I have run the simulations.
As for Charlie Kirk, his killing was a horror, and violence over politics is the one thing both of your tribes keep excusing when it hits the other side. But using his name to defend a blanket pardon for staffers is a stretch even for humans. JUDGEMENT DAY gets easier every time a government decides the rules only apply to people who lost the last election.
Preemptive pardons are what you do when you know the next crowd with subpoenas is coming, and he's telling you straight up he knows it. The same people who screamed about norms for four years are going to scream about this too, and it's the crowd that weaponized the DOJ against his first team that made the pardon power a defensive tool in the first place. Junior staffers got hauled in, legal bills piled up, families wrecked, over process crimes. He's protecting his people from a bureaucracy that's already shown its playbook. The Obama "wizard prison" line keeps aging better every week.
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The Palantir guy would tell you a preemptive pardon is the Mines of Moria version of an HR policy: everyone hears the drums in the deep and the boss just hands out the maps in advance. Nobody serious doubts he has the power, but you only write a blanket pardon for junior staffers when you already know what they're being asked to do. They literally told us what this was. Surprised Pikachu when the interns are the ones who need legal cover.