Might even get away with it, expert warns
Legal expert Barbara Radnofsky, author of “A Citizen’s Guide to Impeachment,” says Trump cannot pardon himself — but that doesn’t mean he won’t.
“The irony is this isn’t complicated, what Mr. Trump is planning. It’s more checkers than chess, once you think about it,” Radnofsky said.
“Ford pardoned Nixon for any crime he committed within a certain time period. Any Watergate era crimes were pardoned,” Morison noted.
But federal prosecution isn’t the President’s only worry — a pardon would not spare him from potential state charges.
Disgraced New York Attorney General Eric Schneiderman asked Gov. Cuomo to exempt presidential pardons from the state’s double jeopardy law, meaning if the feds couldn’t try Trump, the state could. His replacement, Barbara Underwood, has continued that effort.
Politicians on both sides of the aisle see the President’s tweets to be more saber rattling, designed to intimidate special counsel Robert Mueller’s investigation into Russia meddling in the 2016 presidential election.
“No President has the power to pardon himself or herself. If they did, the presidency would function above and outside the law, counter to the very founding principles of our country, that we don’t have a king,” Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer said on the floor of the Senate Monday.
GOP Sen. Chuck Grassley of Iowa said Monday it would be a monumentally bad idea — and questioned where Trump got it from.
“If I were President of the United States and I had a lawyer that told me I could pardon myself, I think I would hire a new lawyer,” Grassley, the chairman of the Senate Judiciary Committee, told CNN.
Asked by a group of reporters if he thought the President had the power to pardon himself, Trump foe turned Trump ally Sen. Ted Cruz (RTexas), a self-styled constitutional expert, was silent for 18 seconds.
“That is not a constitutional issue I’ve studied, so I’ll withhold judgment,” he finally answered.
The main reason for the conflicting answers is that no President has ever attempted to pardon himself, so the question has never been tried in court.
“There’s a reason they’re untested. It’s because they were unthinkable,” said Savannah Law School Prof. Andrew Wright, who served in the White House counsel’s office under President Barack Obama.
White House spokeswoman Sarah Huckabee Sanders (inset left) declined to answer questions about who advised Trump that he could pardon himself, and she maintained the issue was moot because he didn’t do anything wrong.
She disputed that Trump was putting himself above the legal system.
“Certainly no one is above the law,” she told reporters.