PRESIDENT DONALD TRUMP: General Flynn, who is a good man, what they did to General Flynn and so many others -- Hope Hicks, this wonderful young woman, and she's spent much of her time in Washington fighting off, you know, horrible stories and things and she's just a high-quality person.
...
SEAN HANNITY (HOST): Mr. President, the power of the pardon -- I actually think the best pardon you gave is to Alice Marie Johnson -- I think you commuted her sentence, to be more accurate.
TRUMP: Right.
HANNITY: -- is absolute. Have you, at any point, ever considered in the back of your mind, a pardon for any of the people you mentioned? Or, you would wait? I think you had said at one point you wouldn't consider it until after it all worked through.
TRUMP: Well, I don't want to comment on that as far as the pardons are concerned. Yes, it is absolute, and it's a beautiful thing. I've had people, Jack Johnson, the heavyweight champion of the world in the early 1900's, and he went to jail for, you know, no -- no reason -- and so many other things, and Alice Johnson is another good example.
And you know, I -- I -- I really feel good about giving it, where people have been treated unfairly and abused, actually. But, I -- I haven't talked about it with respect to what's going on now. I mean, it's -- it's, you know, I think there's a whole new day starting. I think, you know, I used to use and I still use “drain the swamp.”
We have some very, very bad people in government that would be willing to do very bad things and for bad reasons. So, I don't mention “pardon,” but, you know, I don't say what's going to happen in the future. I just don't comment on it.
