Here's what 11 experts say about whether President Trump can pardon himself
"Pardons, Obstruction of Justice and the Rule of Law in the Demagogic Presidency"
* President Donald Trump said on Monday that he had the "absolute right" to pardon himself — a view he said was shared by "numerous legal scholars."
* It is an open legal question whether the president can pardon himself, because it has never been tested.
* While many experts disagree, some legal scholars who have criticized the president in the past say that he has the legal authority to pardon himself.
Dan Mangan | Tucker Higgins Published 14 Hours Ago Updated 10 Hours Ago CNBC.com
[...]
No American president has ever tested the idea. Nor has a court has ever ruled on the question of whether such an extreme action is allowed under the U.S. Constitution.
But 44 years ago, when the Justice Department was faced with the possibility that President Richard Nixon might try to pardon himself, a top lawyer in the department in a memorandum to the deputy attorney general said the answer to that question was an unequivocal "No."
"Under the fundamental rule that no one may be a judge in his own case, the President cannot pardon himself," .. https://www.justice.gov/file/20856/download .. wrote acting assistant attorney general Mary Lawton in her Aug. 5, 1974 memo, four days before Nixon resigned in disgrace.
"If under the Twenty-Fifth Amendment the President declared that he was temporarily unable to perform the duties of the office, the Vice President would become Acting President and as such could pardon the President. Thereafter the President could either resign or resume the duties of his office," Lawton wrote.
[...] a sample of four
Richard Pildes, Sudler Family Professor of Constitutional Law at New York University School of Law "Nothing in the Constitution or existing constitutional doctrine directly addresses the issue of a presidential self-pardon," Pildes told CNBC. "But much of constitutional law is based on reasoning from the underlying design of the Constitution and the structures it creates, and a presidential self-pardon is so radically inconsistent with the Constitution's commitments to (1) limited government; (2) the separation of powers; (3) and elected officials being accountable to the rule of law that I doubt any court would uphold the legality of a presidential self-pardon."
Mark Tushnet, William Nelson Cromwell Professor of Law at Harvard Law School "The constitutional arguments about self-pardoning are ... complex, and no one should have strongly held views about the correct analysis," Tushnet told CNBC. "That said, my view is that the weight of the arguments lies in favor of finding that the president has the power to self-pardon, because of the president's power to 'take care that the laws be faithfully executed.' This gives the president a great deal of discretion about initiating and terminating investigations, coupled with the absence of express limitations on the pardon power (other than barring pardoning in cases of impeachment, which isn't, technically, a criminal proceeding). But, as almost everyone also acknowledges, exercising the power to self-pardon would almost certainly trigger sufficient public outrage to make impeachment a realistic possibility — or, put another way, exercising the power to self-pardon, if the president has it, would be extraordinarily politically unwise (ordinarily). But, again, we aren't in ordinary times, and perhaps a self-pardon wouldn't trigger that reaction in the present circumstances."
Mark Osler, Professor and Robert and Marion Short Distinguished Chair in Law at the University of St. Thomas "He can issue himself a pardon warrant," Osler told CNBC. "There is nothing to stop him from doing so. The question is what happens next. It probably could not be challenged until a prosecutor presented a charge against him, and he then relied on the Pardon as a defense."
Richard Painter, former chief ethics lawyer to President George W. Bush "He absolutely cannot pardon himself," Painter told CNBC. "I do not know of an instance in human history in which a king has pardoned himself. The pope does confession to another priest. A pardon is by its very nature when one person pardons another. The point is, the constitution uses the word pardon, and a pardon is by very nature a situation that involves two people, or between God and a human being. We even say 'Forgive us our trespasses,' in The Lord's Prayer."
White House deflects questions about Trump's role in Russian lawyer statement
President Donald Trump said Monday that he has “the absolute right” to pardon himself and called the special counsel‘s appointment "unconstitutional." | Olivier Douliery/Getty Images
The White House on Monday declined to explain why officials‘ accounts changed over time about President Donald Trump‘s involvement in a July 2017 statement about his oldest son‘s meeting with a Kremlin-connected lawyer during the 2016 campaign.
Trump‘s legal team said in a January letter to special counsel Robert Mueller that became public over the weekend that Trump had dictated the statement, which described the June 2016 meeting at Trump Tower as primarily about U.S. adoption policy regarding Russian children.
In fact, the meeting was organized after the lawyer, Natalia Veselnitskaya, offered Donald Trump Jr. information about Hillary Clinton, the Democratic presidential nominee. Mueller has reportedly made .. https://www.nytimes.com/2018/01/31/us/politics/trump-russia-hope-hicks-mueller.html .. the misleading statement part of his investigation into Russian interference in the 2016 election and whether any Trump associates helped.
Official explanations of the statement‘s origin, however, have changed over the last year. Trump‘s attorney Jay Sekulow said in July 2017 .. https://www.cnn.com/2017/08/01/politics/sekulow-trump-new-day-cnntv/index.html , after the Trump Tower meeting became public, that the president was not involved in crafting the statement about it. White House press secretary Sarah Huckabee Sanders said in August that Trump “certainly didn’t dictate” the statement but that he weighed in “like any father would do.“
On Monday, however, Sekulow said in a statement that the letter to Mueller was correct in saying Trump dictated the statement.
“The statement in the January letter reflects our understanding of the events that occurred,” Sekulow said.
Later Monday night, Rudy Giuliani, another of the president's attorneys, said Sekulow and Sanders simply got it wrong. They were not, the former New York City mayor added, lying when they earlier downplayed Trump‘s role in shaping the statement.
“You can make a mistake, you can make a mistake, and then if you want to, you could say it‘s a lie,“ Giuliani told CNN anchor Chris Cuomo. “But it was a mistake. I swear to God, it was a mistake. The guy made a mistake.“
Sanders dodged questions about the shifting explanations at the White House briefing Monday afternoon.
“This is from a letter from the outside counsel, and I direct you to them to answer that question,” she said.
“I’m not going to respond to a letter from the president’s outside counsel,” she said later.
The New York Times on Saturday published the letter from Trump’s legal team, which also argues that the notion that Trump tried to obstruct justice by firing former FBI Director James Comey is invalid because the president, as head of the executive branch of government, has authority over all federal investigations. It also said that the president could “terminate the inquiry, or even exercise his power to pardon.”
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