President Donald Trump said he is allowed to pardon himself in an interview on Newsmax’s “Finnerty” on Thursday, Oct. 15, 2026.
Host Rob Finnerty asked the president whether he was seriously considering a self-pardon before he leaves office. Trump first said he “did nothing wrong.” Then he kept going.
“I’m allowed to do a self-pardon. I’m allowed to pardon,” Trump told Finnerty.
“The pardon is very powerful. I know that. They say it’s the most powerful thing a president has, the power of pardon,” he said.
He said he could have pardoned himself at the end of his previous term. He didn’t do it, he said, because he never expected to be dragged “through the mud.”
A couple of months before the Newsmax interview, Trump told a conservative radio show that “a lot of people” wanted him to pardon himself in his first term, and that he had the “absolute right” to do it. He said he fought the cases in court and won instead. Trump was convicted of several felonies in New York, and the federal criminal cases against him ended when he returned to the White House — not because a court ruled in his favor.
‘Years of Nonsense’ for His Aides
Trump spent much of the same exchange on the people who work for him. He said he does not want them spending years fighting cases and hiring lawyers over “years of nonsense,” and he blamed opponents on the left. A few weeks earlier, he told Time magazine he is prepared to issue pardons to members of his administration.
Finnerty also raised Trump’s family. The president announced no pardons for any relatives.
Trump pointed to Joe Biden, arguing that his predecessor showed just how far the pardon power stretches. Before leaving office, Biden issued preemptive pardons to Anthony Fauci, retired Gen. Mark Milley, members of the House Jan. 6 committee and members of his own family, including his son Hunter Biden after federal gun and tax cases.
MS NOW writer Steve Benen said the message to a small army of political appointees is that Trump will hand out pardons no matter what they do on the job, deserved or not. “Systemic government corruption is already a problem in the Trump era,” Benen wrote.
A 1974 Memo, Never Tested
The legal question is not settled. Ahead of Richard Nixon’s resignation in 1974, the Justice Department’s Office of Legal Counsel (OLC) prepared a memo concluding that presidents cannot pardon themselves. OLC opinions do not bind the courts, and the issue has never been tested. No president has ever tried to pardon himself and then faced prosecution.
Congress’s Constitution Annotated lays out competing readings rather than an answer from the courts. Supporters of a self-pardon point to the Constitution’s broad language and the lack of any express ban. Opponents argue that no one should serve as judge in his own case.
Pardons for aides raise a different question. A president’s clemency power covers federal offenses only and can be used before anyone is convicted. It does not reach state crimes, it does not erase civil liability, and it cannot cover conduct that has not happened yet.
Guilfoyle May Be Left Out
One name may not make the list: Kimberly Guilfoyle, the now-former U.S. ambassador to Greece and former fiancée of Donald Trump Jr. A pardon for her was not something he wanted to think about, Trump said. He said he had been disappointed by something he read, that he had not spoken to her, and that he has known her for many years.
Asked on Friday, Oct. 16, whether the president actually plans to pardon himself or his staff, a White House spokesperson pointed back to the Newsmax comments.
Trump praised Guilfoyle’s work as ambassador, and he said “the interesting thing is she was the toast of the town over in Greece.”
