Can Donald Trump Pardon Himself?
The short answer is we don’t know because there is literally no precedent for a self-pardon.
Here is the long answer:
Discussion of the president’s pardoning powers has ramped up under the Trump presidency. And after a bombshell Washington Post report that revealed Donald Trump is asking his advisers about his power to pardon his associates, family and even himself, questions about presidential pardoning power have never been more in focus.
It is said that the only absolute power granted to the president in the Constitution is the power to pardon.
Article II, Section 2, Clause 1 of the Constitution says that the president “shall have Power to Grant Reprieves and Pardons for Offenses against the United States, except in Cases of Impeachment.”
The president can pardon people for specific crimes or even broad federal criminal acts.
In fact, the president can even pardon someone before someone is convicted in court or even before criminal charges are filed. The most famous example of this is the pardoning of former President Richard Nixon for any crimes he committed in office. The Supreme Court ruled in the Nixon case that a president may pardon someone “before federal charges are brought, after conviction and sentencing, or anytime in between.”
So can Trump pardon himself?
The answer to that is slightly more complicated. For one, there is literally no precedent for a president pardoning himself. And so the subject is not settled from a legal standpoint.
However, the general assumption is that the president can not pardon himself because the federal legal precedent is that someone can not sit in judgment of himself. In fact, the issue was debated during the Nixon administration.
According to memos written by Richard Nixon’s Office of Legal Counsel just days before Nixon resigned in 1974, the president may not pardon himself “under the fundamental rule that no one may be a judge in his own case, the President cannot pardon himself.”
But again, there is no precedent for this, so legally speaking we will have to find out together if and when it happens.
Presidential pardons do not apply impeachment
The Constitution is clear, the president “shall have Power to Grant Reprieves and Pardons for Offenses against the United States, except in Cases of Impeachment.”
And there is legal precedent that the act accepting a pardon is also an acceptance of guilt.
In 1915, the Supreme Court ruled that a person who accepts a pardon is confessing guilt because a pardon carries an imputation of guilt.
So it reasons that if a president does attempt to pardon himself it would almost certainly lead to impeachment proceedings since the act of accepting a pardon is a confession of guilt.
[image via Twitter screenshot]
