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Reading This law.stackenchange.com question got me thinking but I wasn't able to find any specific references, in it an nbcnews article is referenced that states:

The president issued a "full and unconditional pardon" for any offenses Hunter Biden has “committed or may have committed or taken part in during the period from January 1, 2014 through December 1, 2024," according to the White House statement.

Disregarding the President who gave the pardon or who received it (this is NOT a question about this specific case but about Presidential Pardons in general)

Does the part

for any offenses Hunter Biden has “committed or may have committed or taken part in during the period from January 1, 2014 through December 1, 2024

Also provides a "full and unconditional pardon" for Federal crimes committed in that period that may have been not yet discovered? Let's say evidence of a completely unrelated crime to the ones known at the time of the pardon is discovered, does that crime get automatically pardoned having been committed in the "Pardoned timeframe"?

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It is clear that a pardon can be given for crimes not yet charged. It has not yet been decided whether a pardon can be given for unspecified offences, although it has been done before.

Article II, Section 2, Clause 1 says:

The President ... shall have Power to grant Reprieves and Pardons for Offences against the United States,* except in Cases of Impeachment.

President Ford's pardon of former President Nixon was for:

a full, free, and absolute pardon unto Richard Nixon for all offenses against the United States which he, Richard Nixon, has committed or may have committed or taken part in during the period from January 20, 1969 through August 9, 1974.

The Supreme Court has said (Ex parte Garland, 71 U.S. 333, 380 (1866))

[The pardon power] extends to every offence known to the law, and may be exercised at any time after its commission, either before legal proceedings are taken, or during their pendency, or after conviction and judgment.

As observed by William F. Duker in "The President's Power to Pardon: A Constitutional History" (1977):

the Supreme Court never has been called upon to judge the validity of an open pardon like the Nixon pardon.

That is still the case today.

* "Offenses against the United States" means federal crimes, as opposed to offenses against any of the several states (state crimes). See Ex parte Grossman, 267 U.S. 87 (1925): "presumably to make clear that the pardon of the President was to operate upon offenses against the United States as distinguished from offenses against the states."

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    The wording of Nixon's pardon suggests he might still have been held accountable for crimes against victims other than the United States (e.g. the Democratic Party, whose offices he ordered raided). Was anything ever made of that?
    – kaya3
    Commented Dec 4 at 12:55
  • Oh, I'm not American (and was born far after Nixon's pardon), aside the fact that Nixon was pardoned I didn't know it was for a specific date range instead of for the specific offences and didn't think to check the exact wording
    – John Doe
    Commented Dec 4 at 14:20
  • Presumably the Justice Department thought the Nixon pardon was effective, since AFAIK they never afterward attempted to prosecute or investigate him. Maybe there is an official DOJ policy about it, like the one about not indicting sitting presidents?
    – Nate Eldredge
    Commented Dec 4 at 15:16
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    @kaya3 Speaking in general terms, in Common Law jurisdictions pretty much all crimes (felonies) are technically against the sovereign. (In the US, this means "the United States" or an individual state.) In a certain technical sense, even for things like rape and murder you're being prosecuted for the harm to the state, not to the victim. Harm to non-state individuals is handled by civil suits, not criminal prosecution. (See OJ Simpson for an example on the distinction between civil and criminal liability.) To my knowledge, presidential/gubernatorial pardons don't apply to civil cases.
    – R.M.
    Commented Dec 4 at 21:01
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Yes. It’s well established that a pardon can be issued before charges are brought, in which case nobody knows what the final charges would be even if the specific instance is known. The general remedy for that is to specify enough to cover whatever possible charges could be made.

A date range does that nicely, and has been used previously.

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  • So in essence it doesn't matter if the crime (or evidence of a crime) is known at the time of the pardon right? (or it never occurred yet so it's technically not decided)
    – John Doe
    Commented Dec 4 at 14:15
  • @JohnDoe: correct. Although I believe it’s generally agreed that a pardon can’t be post dated. Pardon’s have certainly been done on the basis of “It’s my belief that this person is innocent”, both on the basis of a belief that they did the right thing and it shouldn’t have been considered a crime under the circumstances as well a belief that they didn’t commit the alleged act at all.
    – jmoreno
    Commented Dec 5 at 5:28

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