President Trump told TIME he would pardon family members and top aides if Democrats win the midterms and launch investigations, pointing to Joe Biden’s own preemptive pardons as precedent.
In a wide-ranging interview with TIME, President Donald Trump said he would grant pardons to members of his administration, staff, and family before the end of his term if Democrats take power and open investigations aimed at him and those around him, the Daily Mail reported.
The exchange put a hard question on the table: what happens if Republicans lose Congress this November and House Democrats regain subpoena power. Trump answered without hedging.
TIME asked whether he was considering pardons for administration members before leaving office, after he raised the prospect that Democrats would come after him if they win.
"Yeah, sure I'd do that."
He immediately tied the answer to the record left by his predecessor.
"Well, Sleepy Joe Biden, he gave pardons to everyone."
As Joe Biden’s term wound down in 2024 and 2025, he issued pardons covering officials and relatives. Those included preemptive pardons for Dr. Anthony Fauci, brothers James Biden and Francis Biden, sister Valerie Biden Owens, and son Hunter Biden, among others.
Trump pressed the double standard in plain terms.
"Sleepy Joe gave pardons to everybody. He gave them to Fauci... But you mean I'm not allowed to give them, but Sleepy Joe's allowed to give them?"
He added a blunt warning about the cycle he expects if Democrats regain leverage on Capitol Hill.
"They'll probably go after me and I'll go after them."
That warning did not arrive in a vacuum. Democrats on Capitol Hill have discussed probes of the president, his family, Cabinet officials, and closest aides if they retake the House.
Robert Garcia, the top Democrat on the House Oversight Committee, told Politico the ideal investigative targets would be “the president’s sons and the president and the family.” With a House majority, that committee would hold subpoena power next year.
Names already circulating as prime targets include White House Chief of Staff Susie Wiles, Deputy Chief of Staff Stephen Miller, former AI and crypto official David Sacks, Special Envoy Steve Witkoff, and Trump’s son-in-law Jared Kushner.
Interest has also focused on federal deals linked to Trump family members, businesses connected to Witkoff and Kushner around global peace work while they were not official government employees, and Trump’s multi-billion-dollar crypto enterprises. Secretary Pete Hegseth has been flagged for possible questioning over Iran policy and U.S. stockpiles if Democrats win.
Prediction market Kalshi put Democrats at a 91 percent chance of winning the House of Representatives as of Thursday morning. The same snapshot gave Democrats a 62 percent chance of taking the Senate.
Those figures help explain why the pardon question landed when it did. A Democratic House would hand Oversight and other committees the tools to haul in aides, family members, and business records. Trump’s answer treated that prospect as real and answered it with the same tool Biden used at the end of his term.
Trump is not waiting on the polls. He was traveling Thursday to Oklahoma for a campaign rally and was expected to head to Alabama on Friday for another stop.
He told TIME he intends to campaign hard and rejected the idea that his effort would not matter.
"I think we'll do okay if I campaign, and I intend to. If I campaign...you don't give me enough credit. When I campaign, I give people a lot."
The schedule puts the president on the road in red-state territory while the national map, at least in the Kalshi snapshot, still shows Democrats favored to flip the House and competitive for the Senate.
Trump’s TIME remarks cast pre-term pardons as a response to announced investigative intent, not as a free-standing favor. Garcia’s comment about the president’s sons, the president, and the family made the target list public. The Biden pardons for Fauci and multiple Biden relatives made the precedent public.
Trump’s position is that the same authority used at the end of the last Democratic administration remains available to him. He said he would use it if Democrats win and move on his circle. He also said he would answer in kind if they come after him.
None of that resolves the midterms. It does lock in the stakes Trump is describing: control of Congress, subpoena power, and whether the people around a president face years of Democratic-led investigations without the protection Biden extended to his own circle.
Voters will decide the House and Senate in November. Until then, Trump has made clear he will not leave his family and aides exposed to the probes Democrats have already advertised, and he will not accept a rule that applied only when Joe Biden held the pen.
