The executive editor of the National Review penned a column last week, a day after now-President-elect Donald Trump’s resounding victory, calling on President Joe Biden to invite him to the White House and prepare a pardon for his successor.

While Biden did invite Trump, who arrived at the White House Wednesday morning, it’s not clear whether a pardon is forthcoming.
“Biden should … move to use his constitutional authority to pardon Donald Trump of all pending federal charges, and relieve special counsel Jack Smith of his duties,” Mark Antonio Wright noted. “He should then ask New York governor Kathy Hochul to use her authority to pardon Trump for the crimes he was convicted of in New York State.”

While going on to claim that Trump is at least partially responsible for the crimes he’s been either charged with or convicted of, Wright noted that Trump’s Electoral College and national majority victories are “a definitive verdict on the subject delivered by the highest authority: the people.”

“Wise or not, a majority of the public chose to reelect Donald Trump as the next president of the United States. He deserves to enter that term in January 2025 with the slate wiped clean of the controversies of the previous era,” Wright noted.

“No good at all will come of an American president fulfilling his constitutional duties at home and abroad under the cloud of pending criminal prosecutions. No good whatsoever will come of Trump himself ordering the Justice Department to drop the charges or by crossing the Rubicon in American life of ‘self-pardoning,’” he added.

“Joe Biden has not often spent his time in office acting much like a statesman. But a pardon now of Donald Trump would be statesmanlike. And such an act would go a long way toward ending the cycle of lawfare that, if left unchecked, will cause more harm and more damage to the body politic. Gerald Ford’s pardon of Richard Nixon is the precedent here, and it’s a good one,” Wright said.

“Donald Trump should accept such a pardon, if offered by Joe Biden. Trump should then find a way to, at least rhetorically, extend an olive branch to the outgoing president,” he added.

Special Counsel Jack Smith is likely to step down from his position after ending his cases against President-elect Donald Trump, according to Wednesday reports.