Trump’s Pardon Power Isn’t as Absolute as He Thinks

Among the recipients of Trump’s January 6 pardons was John Sullivan, who turned a profit from selling video footage from the riot—money the government later seized. Sullivan claimed, with the backing of the Justice Department, that the government must now reimburse him. Pardons are supposed to relieve a recipient from punishment, and so Sullivan argued that repayment should be a part of that promise. But the court ruled against him, concluding that “funds may not be drawn from the Treasury without an appropriation, plain and simple.” That is, any repayment would run through Congress, which decides how money is dispensed.

The case is nominally about whether a pardonee gets to reclaim seized property. But it is more fundamentally about the separation of powers. The president is vested with the power to pardon, while Congress is vested with the power to spend money. Sullivan received his pardon, but “money is money, the Treasury is the Treasury, and the Constitution says what it says: Once money is in the Treasury, it can only be withdrawn pursuant to a Congressional appropriation,” wrote the Reagan-appointed judge.

This was not the first time this particular issue landed in court; the last time, interestingly enough, was after another insurrection. In 1868, President Andrew Johnson pardoned hundreds of thousands of former Confederates, including Herman Knote, whose property the federal government confiscated and sold during the Civil War. After receiving his pardon, Knote sued to claim the proceeds from the government’s sale of his property, claiming, like Sullivan, that the pardon entitled him to the money.