Ah, but what Trump may not realize is that he could only pardon US federal convictions. A lot of shenanigans are crimes in other jurisdictions. Murder would be a local charge in most cases, for example.
First off, most of his likely targets spend a lot of time in DC – which is Federal jurisdiction. Besides that, it doesn’t really matter whether the pardon really works as long as the guys with blood on their hands think it will.
