Preemptive pardons

Trump says he would offer Musk, other admin officials preemptive pardons "if I needed to"

By Kit Maher

President Donald Trump vowed to “protect” Tesla CEO Elon Musk, who formerly led the Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE), and other members of his administration with possible preemptive pardons.

“It’s talk, but if it is talk, we’ll protect them,” Trump told Miranda Devine on New York Post’s “Pod Force One.”

“If they do it, we’ll just have to protect those people,” Trump said, when asked about the possibility of Democrats targeting Musk or former DOGE employee Edward Coristine, known as “Big Balls.”

Trump spoke about how former President Joe Biden pardoned several people before leaving office. Pressed on whether he would offer pardons to people within his administration, Trump said: “I would if I needed to, sure.”

“Everybody who worked for you?” Devine asked.

“I would not even think about it; I’d do it. I did it for J6,” Trump said, referring to the mass pardons and sentence commutations he issued for those charged in the January 6 riot on the US Capitol.

Some background: In a separate interview with TIME Magazine last month, Trump said that he would consider issuing pardons to members of his administration toward the end of his term: “Yeah, sure I’d do that,” Trump said.