How President Trump's Pardons Are Challenging Political Norms

Summary

Summary of NPR Politics Podcast Episode: "How President Trump's Pardons Are Challenging Political Norms"

Introduction

In the June 3, 2025 episode of The NPR Politics Podcast, hosts Myles Parks, Carrie Johnson, and Mara Liasson delve into the controversial use of presidential pardons by former President Donald Trump. The discussion centers on how Trump's approach to pardoning individuals is reshaping longstanding political norms and the implications for the Department of Justice (DOJ) and American political landscape.

Overview of Trump's Pardons

The episode opens with an examination of President Trump's extensive use of the pardon power, highlighting his issuance of 19 pardons in the previous month alone. Mara Liasson (00:51) emphasizes the unprecedented nature of Trump's assertive use of this executive power:

"Trump has pardoned a lot of white-collar criminals... these pardons are seemingly based on how strongly these people support him" (03:00).

Notable pardons discussed include:

• January 6th Rioters: On his first day back in office, Trump pardoned over 1,500 individuals involved in the Capitol riot, including violent participants who assaulted police officers (01:41).
• Virginia Sheriff: Pardoned Scott Jenkins, convicted of bribery (05:05).
• Tax Fraud Conviction: Pardoned an individual with familial ties to major Trump donors (01:41).

These actions signal a clear message to Trump's base: unwavering support for MAGA supporters, even when criminal activity is involved.

Comparison with Past Presidential Pardons

The hosts compare Trump's pardon strategy to those of previous administrations. Mara Liasson notes that while political pardons are not new—citing Bill Clinton's pardon of Mark Rich and other presidents' pardoning of associates—Trump's approach is markedly more transparent and prolific:

"Trump has done it much more blatantly and transparently... he has made this process very open" (03:53).

Carrie Johnson adds that unlike past presidents who often reserved significant pardons for their final days in office to minimize backlash, Trump has actively employed pardons as a tool to maintain and reinforce his political alliances:

"He has made no secret of the fact that his ears and eyes are open all the time for pardons" (04:20).

Impact on Department of Justice and Political Norms

The episode delves into how Trump's use of pardons affects the DOJ and established political protocols. Carrie Johnson highlights the erosion of traditional DOJ independence under Trump's administration:

"There's minimal separation, if any, between what the DOJ wants and what Donald Trump wants" (09:13).

Mara Liasson underscores the dramatic shift in DOJ operations, noting Trump's direct intervention by pardoning cases initiated during his first term:

"That many, if not all of the pardons we've seen so far from Trump have not used the traditional process" (14:15).

This bypass of standard DOJ procedures, which typically involve thorough review and input from prosecutors, undermines institutional checks and balances.

Public and Political Reactions

Despite widespread public disapproval of pardoning violent January 6th defendants, Trump has faced little to no backlash from his own party. Mara Liasson points out the solid support Trump maintains within the Republican Party:

"No consequences for Trump himself when he was convicted... no political consequences with the majority of Americans opposing his pardons" (06:40).

Carrie Johnson adds that the visibility and frequency of these pardons have spurred a burgeoning "cottage industry" of lawyers and advocates actively seeking pardons through Trump's administration, highlighting a systemic shift in how such appeals are made:

"Everybody and their brother can knock on the door at the White House and try to get a reception from Trump" (14:15).

Conclusion

The podcast concludes by acknowledging the ongoing nature of this pardon trend and its potential to further disrupt traditional political and judicial norms. The hosts agree to continue monitoring the situation as more pardons proceed. The episode underscores the significant and potentially lasting impact of Trump's pardon strategy on American politics and governance.

Notable Quotes with Timestamps

• Mara Liasson (03:00): "Trump has pardoned a lot of white-collar criminals... these pardons are seemingly based on how strongly these people support him."
• Carrie Johnson (04:20): "He has made no secret of the fact that his ears and eyes are open all the time for pardons."
• Mara Liasson (06:40): "No consequences for Trump himself when he was convicted... no political consequences with the majority of Americans opposing his pardons."
• Carrie Johnson (14:15): "Everybody and their brother can knock on the door at the White House and try to get a reception from Trump."

Final Thoughts

This episode of The NPR Politics Podcast provides a comprehensive analysis of President Trump's unprecedented use of the pardon power, highlighting its implications for political norms, the DOJ, and broader governance. Through insightful discussions and expert commentary, the podcast offers listeners a nuanced understanding of the evolving political landscape shaped by these actions.

Transcript

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[Doug]

Is Doug in Haverhill, Massachusetts. I just finished mowing my lawn for the first time this year.

[Myles Parks]

Now I'm sitting by my fire pit and enjoying a beer on one of.

[Doug]

The first nice days in spring.

[Podcast Host]

This podcast was recorded at 1:03pm on June 3, 2025.

[Myles Parks]

Things may have changed by the time you hear this, but hopefully I'll be.

[Doug]

Back here enjoying another nice day by the fire.

[Mara Liasson]

I'm jealous.

[Carrie Johnson]

I want to eat s' mores with Doug.

[Podcast Host]

I want to know what beer he's drinking. You know, I feel like just tell us the beer also. Hey there. It's the NPR Politics podcast. I'm Myles Parks. I cover voting.

[Carrie Johnson]

I'm Carrie Johnson. I cover the Justice Department.

[Mara Liasson]

And I'm Mara Liasson, senior national political correspondent.

[Podcast Host]

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?

[Mara Liasson]

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. 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 six 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.

[Podcast Host]

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, are so different here?

[Mara Liasson]

Well, they're not. They're not different in kind. There have been political pardons before. You know, 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, 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 6th rioters, and he's done it very much out in the open.

[Carrie Johnson]

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, 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 pardons. 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. 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, a very hot market right now. And it depends on, you know, ties and connections to people in the Trump White House, to Trump himself, and that that seems more amped up and more active than it has been in the past.

[Mara Liasson]

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 longtime, very ardent support 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.

[Podcast Host]

I mean, it's interesting to me. There's not necessarily polling data on every single one of those pardons, but there is a lot of data on how people feel about the January 6th 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. 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?

[Mara Liasson]

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. 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.

[Carrie Johnson]

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.

[Podcast Host]

Wow. Okay, let's leave it there for a quick break. We'll be back with more in just a minute.

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[Doug]

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[Podcast Host]

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 want to use the work of people who now work under him. Right?

[Carrie Johnson]

Miles. Even if the senior leaders of the Justice Department wanted to go a different way than Trump has, and there is very little evidence that they do. Remember Pam Bondi, the attorney general, Todd Blanch, the deputy attorney general, and Emil Bove, the deputy or right hand man to Todd Blanche. They're all personal defense lawyers to Donald Trump. In previous years, in 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 U.S. attorney in D, was appointed by Donald Trump. All those January 6th investigations, generally speaking, started under Trump. And on his first day in office in the new term, all of that stuff virtually went away.

[Mara Liasson]

And that really shows you the kind of incredible Impact, just like a 180 degree turn that Trump has had on.

[Carrie Johnson]

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 Federalist Society or somebody else who had been around Washington a really long time and around establishment Washington.

[Mara Liasson]

Well, Kerry, 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?

[Carrie Johnson]

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.

[Myles Parks]

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 in the paper all of a sudden.

[Carrie Johnson]

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.

[Myles Parks]

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.

[Carrie Johnson]

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.

[Podcast Host]

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?

[Carrie Johnson]

You know, Mara 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 100 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. That 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.

[Mara Liasson]

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 gonna pardon Bob Menendez, but Bob Menendez knows what to say.

[Podcast Host]

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 Myles Parks. I cover voting.

[Carrie Johnson]

I'm Carrie Johnson. I cover the Justice Department.

[Mara Liasson]

And I'm Mara Liasson, Senior national Political Correspondent.

[Podcast Host]

And thank you for listening to the NPR Politics podcast.

[Doug]

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