Dem
47
GOP
53
Donald Trump often gives subordinates orders that may vary from barely legal to completely illegal. As he gets more and more cornered, he may soon be issuing many orders that are completely illegal and the people receiving them may refuse to carry them out, lest some future administration prosecute them. However, Trump is on top of this and has a solution. He has apparently promised to pardon everyone who works with him before he leaves office. One insider quoted him as saying: "I'll pardon everyone who has come within 200 feet of the Oval." The blast radius has expanded. Earlier this year, he was promising to pardon anyone who came within 10 feet of him.
In one conversation, Trump said he would issue a mass pardon, rather than individual pardons. This could be iffy and people asked to carry out illegal acts might still be worried. While the pardon power is absolute, the courts have never ruled on what form a pardon must take. Very likely, a document stating: "I, Donald John Trump, do hereby pardon Jacob Chansley for his conviction for obstructing an official proceeding on Jan. 6, 2001" and signed by Trump would be an official pardon. But what about a bleat to his lawless social network saying: "Everybody who was within 200 feet of me while I was president is hereby pardoned." Is that a valid pardon? If someone is later charged with some crime and later claims he was within the TFZ (Two-hundred Foot Zone), does he get away with it? How would one prove the distance?
More generally, would some future administration even honor such a pardon? It is certainly possible that some future AG could maintain that a valid pardon must contain these three elements: (1) the name of the person pardoned, (1) the crime committed, and (3) the date of the conviction. The AG could reject pardons for unspecified future prosecutions and maintain that a pardon is only possible for convictions prior to the date of the pardon. It would then be up to the courts to rule on this. The AG could argue that the pardon power was intended to allow the president to correct a miscarriage of justice, as when someone was found guilty of some crime he said he didn't commit and later someone else admitted to having committed the crime. The AG could also argue that the Founders never meant to create a situation in which the president could say to someone: "Here is an undated pardon. Now go, and please commit this list of crimes for me." It is far from certain how the courts would rule in such a case.
A second problem for the would-be criminal (other than worrying about the validity of the pardon) is whether to trust Trump to actually issue the pardon before Jan. 20, 2029, at noon. He could forget or later change his mind. Or he could use an autopen to sign it and then have some future president or court say: "Autopens don't count." (V)