There will be some main players now in determining what actions the essentially neo-Nazi far right carries out in the US later this month, but their identities are not being made public. They may well not include any well-known Republican politicians, or anybody who has spent much time in or near the White House or in the company of Stephen Bannon etc. during the past four years. The common view among most of them will be that Trump is a bit of a “pussy” and in any case who is no longer personally relevant even if his name will probably appear on some of the flags that are carried at some of the actions. That is so even if most of the senior echelon will have some kind of, ahem, “relationship” with state spooks. Will the lid be kept on? Who knows?
A guess would be that Trump has been told that any pardons he wants to issue need to be okayed by McConnell or Pelosi or, when it comes down it, by Joe Biden.
If Trump fancies playing a “game” of somehow announcing he has pardoned, ooh, let’s say a defendant such as Ghislaine Maxwell, or that he has issued an “indulgence” type of pardon to, hmm, let’s say Jared Kushner, without clearing it with his captors first, he will be frogmarched out of the Oval Office WITHOUT COFFEE and WITHIN MINUTES. That will have been made clear to him. Either McConnell will recall the Senate and ensure Trump’s conviction in a 10-minute impeachment trial, or Pence will 25th him, or both, if the 25th needs to be invoked to allow all the senators time to get to the Senate. Whilst that would be very dramatic, though, it would be a sideshow, and given Trump’s extremely restricted freedom of operation whatever is decided by controlling figures in e.g. the Aryan Brotherhood may be of more import.