We know Trump is going to sign a number of presidential pardons for people close to him at some point before he slinks back to the Mar-a-Lago never to return, but how many?
According to Politico, Trump is considering pre-emptive pardons for his whole family among 20 people total including Rudy Giuliani.
Roughly 20 top aides and associates are on tap for a potential pardon, though the list is evolving, according to one of the people. The list includes Donald Trump Jr. and Eric Trump, who run the family’s namesake business, and Ivanka Trump and Jared Kushner, a husband-and-wife duo who are both senior aides at the White House. All four were involved in Trump’s reelection campaign.
Trump has even mused on Twitter that he has “the absolute right to PARDON” myself — a legally contested (but untested) claim. [...]
The pardons would be designed to prevent Trump’s allies from being ensnared in any more federal investigations.
The obvious question here is what federal crimes have Trump's children committed? What did they do that federal prosecutors could charge them for?
There's little doubt in my mind that they've all committed various crimes over the past four years, but we don't know what they've done exactly. Jared Kushner in particular has definitely done some crimes. Don Jr. probably has too.
You know, I don't have a law degree and admit my knowledge of the mechanics of a "pre-emptive pardon" are limited, but it's not clear to me how a pardon would prevent an investigation of Trump's children. A pardon would ostensibly shield them from prosecution, but not investigation. A pre-emptive pardon would also have to be precisely worded to clear them of an unknown crime, would it not? Wouldn't it have to explicitly state what their crime was? What are they being pardoned for?
In any case, I've long said I believe the real legal and financial risk to Trump and his family will come from state and local authorities and creditors, not the Feds.