Republican Lawmakers Reckon with Trump’s Pardons

In the past two months, President Donald Trump has pardoned a convicted drug trafficker, an unemployment scammer, a money launderer whom he said he is unfamiliar with and a foreign bribe recipient.

They also happened to be former Honduran President Orlando Hernández, expelled former Rep. George Santos, billionaire crypto tycoon Changpeng Zhao and Rep. Henry Cuellar, a Democratic congressman whose election could make or break the next House majority.

The pardons — and post-pardon fallout — are increasingly rankling Republican lawmakers, who are left with little recourse to rein in Trump despite him, at times, undermining their political messaging about stamping out “waste, fraud and abuse” and cracking down on foreign drug trafficking.

“I wouldn’t have pardoned those people,” Oversight Chair James Comer told NOTUS of Reps. Santos and Cuellar, as well as Hernández. “But I’m not president.”

The pardoning spree has gotten to the point that even the president is admitting to buyer’s remorse.

“Such a lack of LOYALTY, something that Texas Voters, and Henry’s daughters, will not like,” Trump wrote in a Truth Social post after Cuellar decided not to switch parties post-pardon.

“Oh’ well,” Trump continued, “next time, no more Mr. Nice guy!”

Comer has been leading the charge against former President Joe Biden’s pardons and launched an investigation into whether they are invalid because he used automatic signatures known as the autopen. Comer’s skepticism of pardons is perhaps unsurprising, but it’s noteworthy he would question specific cases and indicative of a broader queasiness in the GOP about Trump’s recent pardons.

“I’ve always been an advocate for pardon reform,” Comer added.

Republican Sen. Thom Tillis, a member of the Senate Judiciary Committee, told NOTUS he had “more fundamental questions about the people making the recommendations” than he did of the president’s decision to make the pardons.

“I wouldn’t expect the president to go through the details of a pardon application,” he said. “But I do expect those who make the recommendations to, and I’ve got some concerns with some of them.”

The man leading those recommendations, Ed Martin, failed to gather enough support for a Senate confirmation as U.S. attorney for Washington, D.C. His presence during the Jan. 6 “Stop the Steal” rally and defense of accused rioters was enough to spook key Judiciary Committee members, like Tillis. With no path toward a Senate confirmed role, Trump installed Martin to manage pardons as the first political appointee to serve as the Department of Justice’s pardon attorney.

White House press secretary Karoline Leavitt said during a briefing last month that pardons go through a “very thorough review process” that includes the DOJ and the White House Counsel’s office. She added that Trump is “most interested in looking at pardoning individuals who were abused and used by the Biden administration’s Justice Department and were over prosecuted by a weaponized DOJ.”

“President Trump has exercised his constitutional authority to issue pardons and commutations for a variety of individuals – he is the final decision-maker on any pardon or commutation,” White House spokesperson Abigail Jackson said in a statement. “And the only pardons anyone should be critical of are from ‘President Autopen,’ who pardoned and commuted sentences of violent criminals including child killers and mass murderers — and that’s not to mention the proactive pardons he ‘signed’ for his family members like Hunter on his way out the door.”

The challenge for Republican lawmakers is that they have few levers to pull to formally register any frustration with the pardons. Presidential pardon power is in Article II of the Constitution, leaving Congress without many official mechanisms to check the president on pardons — short of oversight and impeachment.

“I find it kind of difficult to really weigh in on one pardon or another,” Judiciary Committee member Rep. Kevin Kiley told NOTUS, “because you can probably in any individual case, you could say, ‘Well, of course, that person doesn’t deserve to get out of prison early.’ But that’s gonna be every pardon, pretty much.”

But just because Congress cannot undo Trump’s pardons doesn’t mean they’re happy with them.

Tillis and a number of Republican lawmakers have taken umbrage with Trump’s blanket pardons of Jan. 6 rioters.

National Republican Campaign Committee Chair Richard Hudson told NOTUS last week that Trump’s Cuellar pardon surprised him and made the otherwise vulnerable incumbent a more “formidable” opponent to try to unseat.

House Republicans who led the charge to expel Santos from the chamber were also ruffled by Trump’s pardon of the former New York lawmaker. New York Rep. Nicole Malliotakis told CNN it was the “wrong decision” in October. Santos appeared on Capitol Hill on Wednesday sporting his old member pin, which gave him unfettered access to mingle on the House floor.

Few Republican lawmakers were eager to offer NOTUS a full-throated endorsement of Trump’s pardons, instead throwing up their hands to say the pardons are, simply, out of Congress’ control.

“There’s nothing I can do about it,” Judiciary Committee member Sen. John Kennedy told NOTUS in response to whether he is comfortable with Trump’s pardons. “The people are already pardoned. I’m trying to spend my time on things I can do something about.”

Asked about Trump’s pardon of Hernández last week, Senate Majority Leader John Thune told reporters, “It’s a prerogative, as you know, of the executive branch.” Speaker Mike Johnson has struck a similar tone, telling ABC News in October, “The president has the right in the Constitution for pardon and commutation, of course,” referring to Santos’ pardon.

“At least he’s doing it up front and during the presidency,” Sen. Ron Johnson told NOTUS of Trump’s pardons, “as opposed to waiting and granting 1000s of pardons at the very end of his presidency.”

ABC questioned Judiciary Committee member Sen. Eric Schmitt about the Hernández pardon last week, and in a display of the general GOP discomfort with the topic, he changed the subject.

“I’m not familiar with the facts or circumstances,” Schmitt told George Stephanopoulos, “but I think what’s telling here is to try to imply that somehow President Trump is soft on drug smuggling is just ridiculous. It’s totally ridiculous.”

Still, some top Republican lawmakers unequivocally endorsed the pardons.

“Pardon power is clear in the Constitution,” House Judiciary Chair Jim Jordan told NOTUS. “The pardon power resides solely with the president of the United States. He can exercise it however he darn well wants. That’s how our constitution works, and I’m comfortable with how it’s working.”