BURSTPresident has commuted the sentences of nearly 1,500 people and issued pardons to 39 others in largest single-day act of clemency in US history
Once he is inaugurated on January 20, one of Donald Trump’s first orders of business will be pardoning people convicted or accused of crimes related to the January 6 attack, and also actions to expand oil production, the president-elect told Time.
The magazine today named the president-elect its “person of the year”, and published a long piece that details how his campaign returned him to the White House, and what he will do once he gets there.
One of the first official acts of his presidency, Trump tells TIME, will be to pardon most of the rioters accused or convicted of storming the Capitol to block the certification of Biden’s victory. “It’s going to start in the first hour,” he says. “Maybe the first nine minutes.” Trump also plans early actions to reverse many of Biden’s Executive Orders and expand the drilling of oil on federal land.
Trump’s most aggressive moves will be on immigration enforcement. He vows to tighten the U.S. border with Mexico through a slew of Executive Orders, and aides say he would end the U.S. “catch-and-release” program and resume construction of a border wall. At the same time, he says, he will order U.S. law-enforcement agencies—and potentially the military—to embark on a massive deportation operation designed to remove more than 11 million undocumented migrants from the country. While the Posse Comitatus Act forbids the deployment of the military against civilians, Trump says he is willing to enlist the military to round up and deport migrants. “It doesn’t stop the military if it’s an invasion of our country,” he says. Pressed on how he would respond if the military refuses to carry out those orders, Trump says, “I’ll only do what the law allows, but I will go up to the maximum level of what the law allows.”
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