Rudy Giuliani. Ivanka Trump. Joseph Maldonado-Passage, AKA Joe Exotic, star of the Netflix series Tiger King. And, just possibly, Donald Trump himself.
These are some of the candidates mentioned as prospects for official pardons before the US president leaves office on 20 January. Such a spree would test the political and constitutional limits of a centuries-old power that echoed the British monarchy. It would also be revelatory of the potential legal jeopardy of Trump and his allies once they depart the White House.
“The fact that we’re even having this conversation speaks volumes about the level of criminal exposure that they all think that they have,” said Tara Setmayer, a former Republican communications director on Capitol Hill. “You don’t talk about pardons unless there is a concern about things that have been done wrong. It’s the antithesis of draining the swamp. What happened to that?”
While presidents…
— to www.theguardian.com
