How in the world could he have pardoned them WHEN HE WAS PRESIDENT?
All you do is storm around and do caps lock without any sorts of sanity.
Good luck with that, it's really persuasive. Stupidity never is.
Did the President have the authority to issue preemptive pardons?
The short answer is yes. “Generally speaking, the president can pardon federal crimes and people can request clemency,” Jeffrey Crouch, a government professor at American University and an expert on presidential pardon power, wrote in an email to TIME. “Even though a pardon usually comes at the end of the legal process, the president can short-circuit that process if he wants.”
Past presidents have issued blanket pardons, such as Jimmy Carter who exonerated everyone who dodged the Vietnam draft. It’s much rarer, though, for presidents to pardon individuals who have not yet been charged with a crime or not knowing the precise charge, if any, they were expected to face. A rare exception was when former President Gerald Ford pardoned his predecessor, Richard Nixon, in 1974 for whatever crimes he may have committed against the United States as president.
Trump himself waded into similar territory with his former National Security Adviser Michael Flynn, whom he pardoned in 2020 for lying to federal investigators but also for “any and all” possible offenses he may have committed related to Special Counsel Robert Mueller’s investigation.
For the most part, however, pardons are issued for specific offenses, Litman argues. “In theory, it’s well understood that a pardon is for specified conduct,” he said. “It’s not just a get-out-of-jail-free card.”
Nonetheless, Trump had the authority to issue very broad pardons to some of his allies in Congress, Crouch says. “President Trump could have pardoned people without spelling out exactly what offenses he was pardoning,” he says. “The president has leeway to fashion the type of mercy he is offering and how broad it can be, but recent presidents are usually specific about pardons.”
YOU RETARD.