This is basically the same kind of situation that Republicans were upset about when Joe Biden was still in office, which is why people are pointing out the comparison now.
At the moment, Donald Trump has been talking about using his power to give pardons to people who work around him, even though he’s still early in his second term. A presidential pardon means the president can forgive someone for a federal crime, so they don’t have to face punishment for it. What’s getting attention is that Trump is talking about this much earlier than Biden did, and in a much broader way.
Reports from The Wall Street Journal say that during private meetings, Trump told his staff that he would pardon basically anyone who had been near the Oval Office. Some people said he joked about anyone within 200 feet, others said 10 feet. The exact number doesn’t really matter—the point is that he was talking about a very wide group of people. According to people in the room, he brings this idea up more than once, so it’s not just a one-off comment.
The White House response is that he’s joking and not being literal. His press secretary, Karoline Leavitt, pushed back on the reporting and said the comment shouldn’t be taken seriously. At the same time, she reminded people that the president does legally have very strong pardon powers, which means he can choose to pardon people if he wants to.
Near the end of his presidency, Biden gave pardons to several people who Republicans had been criticizing or investigating. That included his son, Hunter Biden, and a well-known health official, Anthony Fauci. Republicans argued that those pardons were unfair or politically motivated. Later on, Trump claimed those pardons didn’t count because they were signed using an autopen, which is a device that signs documents automatically. However, legally speaking, that doesn’t make the pardons invalid—they still stand.
At the same time, Trump has already used his own pardon power for a number of controversial people. For example, he pardoned Juan Orlando Hernández, who had been convicted of drug trafficking. He also pardoned Ross Ulbricht, who created a dark web marketplace for illegal goods, and Henry Cuellar, who had been involved in fraud issues. On top of that, he pardoned many people who were convicted over their involvement in the January 6 attack on the U.S. Capitol.
So when you look at everything together, the main point people are making is about consistency. Republicans strongly criticized Biden for using pardons in ways they thought were unfair or self-serving. Now, Trump is talking about using pardons in a very broad way himself, and has already given some controversial pardons. Because of that, critics say it looks like the same kind of behavior they complained about before, just coming from the other side.
