Five days after President Trump pardoned his former national security adviser Michael Flynn, Fox News host and Trump ally Sean Hannity offered a suggestion on Monday about whom the president should pardon next: himself and his family.
“The president out the door needs to pardon his whole family and himself,” Hannity said on his radio show. “… I assume that the power of the pardon is absolute, and that he should be able to pardon anybody that he wants to.”
During an interview with Trump advocate Sidney Powell, Hannity brought up a recent opinion article in the New York Times from Andrew Weissmann, a lead prosecutor in the investigation led by former special counsel Robert S. Mueller III. The op-ed called for President-elect Joe Biden’s attorney general to “investigate Mr. Trump and, if warranted, prosecute him for potential federal crimes,” Weissmann wrote.“They want this witch hunt to go on in perpetuity,” he said, referring to Biden and his advisers. “They’re so full of rage and insanity against the president.”Despite Hannity’s suggestion, it is unclear whether a president has the power to pardon himself. Asha Rangappa, a senior lecturer at Yale and a former FBI agent, wrote in The Washington Post that the move would be risky given that there has been no precedent. And by pardoning himself, Trump would essentially be admitting he was guilty of one or many crimes, according to an analysis in The Post.
The nearest example would be President Richard Nixon, whose lawyers suggested he self-pardon in 1974. In response, the Justice Department issued a memorandum opinion to the deputy attorney general stating that the president’s pardoning power couldn’t be applied to himself. President Gerald R. Ford ultimately pardoned Nixon following his resignation.https://www.washingtonpost.com/natio...p-self-pardon/Additionally, a president can’t use his executive powers for corrupt purposes, such as making decisions that would enrich or benefit himself and his family. If Trump pardons himself and his family, the action could fall under those categories, [Mark] Greenberg said.
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This has since expanded into additional stories regarding pardon power, including a report this morning that Giuliani is said to have discussed a pardon with Trump as well as a slew of opinion pieces like this one, questioning whether or not a President can actaully pardon him or herself.
Graig Graziosi's piece in The Independent, I thought, raised the most important question here, which is not if a President can pardon him or herself, but, as Graziosi puts it "with so many other unprecedented issues during the Trump administration," who is going to stop him?
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Originally Posted by Pete
