Trump says he will pardon someone 'very, very important' Tuesday

President Trump said on Monday that he plans to pardon someone “very, very important” on Tuesday, but would not go into details about who it is.

Speaking to reporters on Air Force One while on his way back to Washington from a tour of battleground states in the Midwest, Trump dropped the news about the upcoming pardon – saying only that it would not be former NSA staffer Edward Snowden or Trump’s former national security adviser Michael Flynn.

Trump over the weekend hinted that he was considering pardoning Snowden, the former National Security Agency contractor who has been living in Russia since he leaked information on vast domestic and international surveillance operations carried out by the NSA.

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The Washington, D.C., Circuit Court of Appeals recently told parties to be ready to answer questions about the effect of federal statutes on judicial impartiality in a brief order in connection to the legal dispute over the Justice Department's move to drop charges against Flynn.

The order, which indicated that one court may be planning to question the impartiality of a judge on another court, is the latest twist in the years-long legal saga.

After Flynn had pleaded guilty to lying to the FBI -- then later sought to withdraw that plea -- the DOJ in an unusual move sought to drop the charges, citing alleged misconduct by investigators and a lack of evidence. Then, in his own unusual move, District Court Judge Emmet Sullivan, who is the trial-level judge on the Flynn case, refused to immediately grant the motion to drop charges. He appointed an "amicus curie" -- Latin for "friend of the court" -- to argue against the DOJ motion.

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While pardons generally come at the end of a president’s term, Trump has used them – along with commutations of sentences – throughout his time in the White House.

Trump has pardoned Bernard Kerik, once New York City's police commissioner, who served three years in prison for tax fraud and for making false statements after lying to the George W. Bush White House while being interviewed to serve as Homeland Security secretary.

More recently, the president commuted the sentence for Rod Blagojevich, the former Illinois governor, who spent more than eight years in prison for his failed attempt to sell the U.S. Senate seat that was made vacant after Barack Obama's 2008 election sent him to the White House.