Executive assistant to US President Donald Trump, Natalie Harp, and White House Deputy Chief of Staff Dan Scavino arrive on the South Lawn of the White House in Washington, DC, US, October 25, 2026. REUTERS/Annabelle Gordon
President Donald Trump’s promise to hand out “tremendous numbers of pardons” when he leaves office is a sign that people around him are nervous about legal exposure, according to a former Justice Department pardon attorney.
Liz Oyer appeared on CNN with Kate Bolduan, who played a clip from Trump’s new “60 Minutes” interview, where he was asked whether he expected to issue a lot of pardons at the end of his term, and the president said, “Yes, I do.”
Trump said he didn’t expect to pardon himself but believed he had the power to. He added: “More importantly, I don’t want to have good people that are serving this country and doing a great job spending the rest of their life like I had to do for four years, defending myself by radical left lunatics, by people that were very nasty and mean. I intend to issue tremendous numbers of pardons.”
Oyer said the message was clear.
“It’s definitely an indication that people inside the administration are worried,” Oyer said. “They believe they need legal protection because they have pushed the limits of the law in furtherance of Donald Trump’s political agenda.”
“No doubt there are people all around Donald Trump who are banking on getting pardons at the end of this administration,” she added.
But Oyer warned that a sweeping pardon of the executive branch could be challenged in court.
“By pardoning everyone in the executive branch, he is essentially placing the executive branch outside the reach of the laws passed by Congress,” she said. “So I think there would be a good legal argument to make that those pardons would not be valid.”
She said officials counting on blanket protection “are taking some real risks there. They may not get the protection that they are ultimately counting on.”
Oyer said the pardon power “has become completely degraded under Donald Trump” and is “losing the perception of any legitimacy in the eyes of the public,” adding, “That’s not what the framers of the Constitution intended.”
Earlier in the interview, Oyer brushed off Trump’s claim to “60 Minutes” that he has no idea what’s going on with his investments.
Asked whether she believed him, Oyer replied: “No.” She said that even if it were true, “that’s really beside the point,” because the president “is invested in every single sector that he also regulates.”
She urged Congress not only to investigate but to close what she called “one of the biggest legal loopholes” on the books – the president and vice president are exempt from the federal conflict-of-interest law that applies to the rest of the administration.