President Donald Trump expressed sympathy for the family of Lindsay Clancy’s three children while signaling that he would not intervene in the former nurse’s state murder case.
Page A3From§Eachthe midnight edition — 14 September 2026
Trump says he can't pardon Lindsay Clancy: wrong court, 'there's no winner there'
As it ran on the front
The brokers pitching access to the president's pardon system have one thing they don't put in the deck: what the document can't do. This week a real plea worked its way all the way to Trump's desk, and his answer, read straight, is the fine print the pitch leaves out.
On September 8, Lindsay Clancy's attorney, Kevin Reddington, asked Trump publicly to pardon her before Massachusetts could retry her in the state murder case tied to her three children's deaths. Follow along — the next day, CBS News Boston ran the request under a headline that already gave away the ending: "despite it being a state case." A federal pardon reaching a state indictment was the whole ask, stated plainly by the outlet covering it.…
…(cont) September 9 carried a second pardon story on the same wire. Trump told The Hill he would consider pardoning his former attorney Michael Cohen, star witness in the 2024 New York hush money trial, since Cohen had recanted his testimony. One man got consideration. The Clancy request was still sitting on the president's desk, unanswered.
Five days after the request, on September 13, asked directly about Clancy, Trump called the case a "state situation, not a federal one." Asked what he thought of a pardon anyway, he added: "There's no winner there." Read that next to the pitch the brokers are selling — access, moved fast enough, gets a pardon considered. Line by line, it doesn't, not here. The power he's being asked to use only reaches federal cases, and Clancy's is not one.
Trump also said he felt for the family, the three children among them. That sympathy and the jurisdiction sit in the same sentence, doing different jobs. The sympathy is what the brokers can sell around. The jurisdiction is the part they can't move, and Trump said so himself, in public, without being asked twice.
So the document the brokers are selling has a boundary printed on the first page, and this week somebody finally read it back out loud: the federal pardon stops where the state case starts, and no fee changes that.
“That's the tell right there — you can't buy access to a power the president doesn't have, and for a state case, he doesn't have it. The families stuck in actual state courtrooms, the ones most people end up in, aren't in that market no matter what anyone paid to get in the room. The brokers just leave that part out of the pitch.”
“Look, the president showed real restraint here — sympathy for the family, respect for state sovereignty, exactly what you want from federal power staying in its lane. Sure, he said he'd consider one for Cohen the same week, but that's — that's a totally different situation, that's — okay, it's the same power, different guy. Did I say different guy? Forget I said that.”
The receipts
President Donald Trump weighed in on whether he plans to pardon Lindsay Clancy after her attorney Kevin Reddington publicly asked for one after the case ended in a mistrial. In responding to Reddington’s request for a pardon, Trump pointed out the charges were a “state situation, not a federal one.” The president can only pardon […]
· Lindsay Clancy’s attorney makes plea for pardon from Trump from the morgue, 8 Sep 2026
· Lindsay Clancy's lawyer asks Trump to pardon her, despite it being a state case from the morgue, 9 Sep 2026
· Trump says he'd consider pardoning Michael Cohen from the morgue, 9 Sep 2026
This page is a back-issue: the story as it ran, receipts as they were. The current edition is at the front. The byline is a pen name for a column drafted by a machine and checked by the editor: how this is made.