Trump: 'I have the absolute right to pardon myself'

[Maj. Bill Martin]

Oddly, though, one of the authors of this letter and the strategy - John Dowd - left the legal team.

True enough.  I was just explaining why the argument was raised in the first place.  And it's probably worthy of noting that Trump hasn't pardoned himself, and most likely has zero intention of doing so.  That's probably why it just kind of drifted out of the news.  It's a theoretical argument, not something he's actually done.

[the_doc]

Well, if they wanted to make it a public relations issue, as Giuliani has said about the Mueller probe, it's a loser, all around.




https://www.yahoo.com/news/ap-norc-poll-americans-no-presidential-self-pardons-120148682--politics.html

Thanks for that post, @edpc!  Among other things, the graphics prove what I have always maintained:  A lot of Republicans really aren't honest political thinkers; really don't understand the importance of the original intent of the Constitution's Framers; and (thus) really don't respect the Constitution as well as they should.  I would even go so far as to say that  a lot of Republicans haven't proven that they understand our Republic of Constitutional Law well enough to be calling themselves Republicans.

In the present case, I am afraid that Trumpers are just Trumpers, so to speak.  They want to back Trump even when he is wrong.  This skews their judgment.  (My wife and I sat out the 2016 election for conscientious reasons, but we support our POTUS whenever we can.  On the flip side, we just don't intend to believe that Truimp is right when he's not.)

Mark Levin, oddly enough, may be largely to blame for the Trumpers' present confusion.  To illustrate, my wife and I saw Levin making his letteristic argument supporting Trump's legal claim, and she looked over at me and said in an almost pained way that Levin's argument seems sound.  I responded by saying that Levin is full of crap.  I then spent about two minutes dissecting Levin's position, and my wife responded by saying something like "Wow, you're right.  Levin is dead wrong."

Please see my next post.

[Sanguine]

Well, if they wanted to make it a public relations issue, as Giuliani has said about the Mueller probe, it's a loser, all around.




https://www.yahoo.com/news/ap-norc-poll-americans-no-presidential-self-pardons-120148682--politics.html

I would love to see results from this poll done in the 0bama years.  I'll bet that the results would be flipped.

[the_doc]

@Mesaclone
@Maj. Bill White
@Oceander
@Smokin Joe
@Emjay
@edpc
@Sanguine

In my Post #154, I started summarizing the reasons why I maintain that the self-pardon defense is so bad that it would backfire on President Trump.   In that earlier post, I presented what has been called the “Natural Law argument” against self-pardon.  That is the best-known argument against self-pardons, and I regard it as devastating in and of itself.  As it turns out, however, Trump’s position gets much, much worse when we look further.

THE PRESENT POST CONTINUES MY ARGUMENT AGAINST THE IDEA OF SELF-PARDONS:

Argument based on Federalist Paper #74:  A pardon is an act of mercy.

The very idea of mercy inherent in a proper pardon presupposes that someone in a position of power grants the pardon out of a compassion for the plight of another soul suffering under the often harsh terms of criminal justice.  Alexander Hamilton manifestly considered the power to grant a pardon to be a noble provision in the Constitution in that a pardon exemplifies a spirit of true charity, of kindness.

(Thanks to @Maj. Bill White for the above insights concerning Federalist Paper #74.)

One law professor has summarized the correct view of pardons by declaring that a pardon is for mercy, rather than for self-enrichment.  The Constitution does not say this, but Hamilton implies as much.

Although there have been Presidential and gubernatorial pardons that we suspect to have been essentially purchased from corrupt Executives (e.g., some of the pardons granted by Bill Clinton just before he left the White House], these would amount to abuses of the power to pardon.  The important principle that remains is that a pardon is decidedly ignoble if it is given for the benefit of the pardoner.
 
That being the case, a self-pardon is the most disgusting scenario of all for a so-called “pardon.” 

My bottom-line point is that our Framers never intended their words to be twisted to yield a “loophole” that a rogue President could jump through to escape criminal justice.  An Originalist lawyer—i.e. the only kind of lawyer who honestly and consistently upholds the Constitution—would never parse the language of the Pardon Clause to claim that a POTUS has an absolute right to pardon himself.
 
(The fact that a defense attorney might posture in an attempt to save his Presidential client’s neck—especially when he is trying to save the POTUS from an unjust prosecution—is an altogether different matter.  The problem with such posturing in this particular case is that a self-pardon could be quickly declared invalid.  I don’t see how a federal judge would be able, given the courtroom setting, to duck the matter or even delay a ruling against the “pardon.” The Originalists’ evidence against self-pardoning is, in fact, so overwhelming that the theory of self-pardon should never be brought up, in my opinion.)

***

Argument from the root meaning of “pardon”:  A pardon is necessarily a two-party transaction.

Since this is a serious exegetical argument, it ought to be especially sobering to lawyers.  (See below.)

When we speak of “a pardon,” that combination of a noun with an article adjective would cause most people to think in narrow, technical (?) terms—i.e., most people would think about the noun “pardon” being used in the U.S. Constitution.  Since the Constitution doesn’t bother to describe fully the overall characteristics of a proper pardon, most people would think of "a pardon" in what they believe is a cautiously narrow way--i.e., defining the noun ”pardon” as simply an exemption of a criminal from retributive justice.  But that exemption from punishment is ultimately just the immediate (and undeniably consequential) result of the larger act of pardoning.  In other words, there is more to a pardon than merely the result of the pardon.   

To fully appreciate what I mean, we need to examine the verb “pardon.”

If we bump into someone on a busy sidewalk, we almost reflexively say “Pardon me.”  And we always make this request of the person whom we bumped.  We do not shrug off the offense long enough to look around and find some uninvolved party from whom we might request a pardon.  An uninvolved party cannot pardon us.  Uninvolved parties would regard us as nuts if we were to say “Please pardon me for bumping into a lady a block or two from here.”

In short, the power to pardon lies only with the offended party.  This is a no-brainer.  The general idea of pardoning is a matter of forgiveness.  If you haven’t committed any offense whatsoever against me, the idea that I might choose to forgive you would be nonsensical.  There would be nothing whatsoever for me to forgive.

Here, then, is the proper, amplified definition of a pardon:  a pardon is a bestowal of full, complete forgiveness (including, of course, the ruling out of any vengeance or other retribution), which free-grace gift is sovereignly, mercifully granted by the offended party to a penitent petitioner (the fellow who caused the offense).       

(The only reason why a President [or a State Governor] can grant pardons to perpetrators of crimes against the State, by the way, is because the Executive is the administrative representative of the offended State.) 

And since the offender and the offended are necessarily two different parties, a self-pardon is a flagrant contradiction in terms.  In other words, a self-pardon is an impossibility by definition.  (Notice how this position dovetails with what I have already asserted based on Hamilton’s views of mercy.)  Heck, the reason why the Framers never bothered to elucidate in the Pardon Clause all of the features of a legally proper pardon is because they didn't regard such elucidation as needed. 

Hmmm....More on this later.

***

At this point, I would dare to claim that when we put this post with my Post #154, we have an ironclad case against self-pardoning for anything whatsoever.

Ah, but the President's hypothetical case gets even worse.  I have saved the most important argument for last.  (See my next post on this subject.  The good news is that if we abandon the Trump team's crappy theory of self-pardoning, Trump's case against Mueller crystallizes properly and powerfully.)

[Smokin Joe]

I think the case against self-pardoning can be summed up in three words:

Conflict of Interest

Such situations have never been something which set well with the American People's sense of fairness, and would only further the impression amongst the rank and file that Washington's best hope for ending the endemic and pervasive corruption there would involve a localized extinction level event on the order of the destruction of Sodom and Gomorrah. Polarization of the electorate has reached the point that either side would say the other deserved it.

Note that I am not calling for any such event to be perpetrated, by man nor diety.

[the_doc]

@Mesaclone
@Maj. Bill White
@Oceander
@Smokin Joe
@Emjay
@edpc
@Sanguine

In this post, I will present my concluding argument that a POTUS can never pardon himself for anything whatsoever.

THE ARGUMENT: 

1)   A sitting POTUS cannot pardon himself to thwart his own impeachment.  The Impeachment Clause explicitly rules out the Presidential power to pardon for impeachment scenarios.


2)   Although someone might very well say “Aha, that means that he can pardon himself in some other situation,” it turns out that there is no “other” Constitutional situation of criminal charges that can be made against a sitting POTUS.  (A POTUS cannot pardon himself without being genuinely accused of a crime.) 


QED:  There is no situation whatsoever in which self-pardoning is legal.  (Notice from my previous posts that this was surely presuppositional with our Framers--based largely on the etymology of a pardon as the State's sovereign forgiveness, not as a self-serving "loophole" that is necessarily only contemptuous of justice.) 

***

If a sitting POTUS were to be indicted rather than impeached, the indictment itself would have to be simply defied as illegal.  Claiming a prerogative of self-pardon is definitely the wrong defense.  An illegal indictment does not suddenly make the Constitutionally repugnant claim of a self-pardon legal.  (Read my previous posts to see why I call a self-pardon only a repugnant, snaky ploy.)

This approach of scoffing at the indictment is the moral and Constitutional high ground.  If a seemingly (obviously?) crooked cop like Mueller continues trying to bring an indictment against Trump, Trump should open up a sealed indictment against Mueller (and perhaps his key prosecutors as well) for corruption, for conspiracy, for abuse of power, for flagrant violations of the Special Counsel statute, for sedition—and possibly even for full-fledged treason. 

Heck, Mueller is actually pretty low-hanging fruit in the Republic’s life-and-death war against the Deep State.  Mueller’s improprieties, past and present, would frame a perfect case-in-point as to why the Framers surely intended that impeachment be the only course for stopping a criminal President.

Arresting Mueller would be inflammatory, but I believe that it is a Constitutionally proper step.  And the Constitution aside, smashing Mueller would be immeasurably wiser than trying to stalemate Mueller by a Presidential “self-pardon.”  As the recent surveys suggest, the exercise of claiming a completely stupid self-pardon would be political suicide. 

Besides, I would worry that claiming a prerogative of self-pardon would amount to a unstipulated (tacit) acknowledgment that that the criminal indictment was actually legal.  (Oh, great!  That would be a real muddy water scenario at best.)  The Trump team should instead fight tooth-and-toenail to block an indictment on the grounds that it is flagrantly illegal and obviously borne of a spirit of sedition.  To make this point emphatically, the Chief Executive should seriously entertain exercising his legal right to have his DOJ open a sealed indictment against a terribly shady character like Mueller.  Arresting the Special Counsel would be frightfully but wonderfully dramatic.  (A lot of folks would cry foul, but under the circumstances, that's just too bad.)   

In short, just as our Framers would tell us that Mueller must not try to make a wickedly phony end-run around the important Constitutional step of impeachment, they would surely tell Trump not to try to make a wickedly phony end-run against the indictment by using a wickedly phony self-pardon.  (Go after the bad guy.  Don't become a bad guy yourself.)

The self-pardon would not be allowed.  Period.  It would leave Trump in a mess worse than ever.  The Trump team would never get its momentum back.  And as the recent survey suggests, a self-pardon could trigger an impeachment--perhaps even a concurrent impeachment--to get rid of a President who seemingly does “believe he is above the law.”  (You can bet that Jim Acosta would start screaming out this complaint--along with everyone else in the Mockingbird Media.  The MSM could reignite a political firestorm so fast that a lot of Pubbies in the House would start wetting their pants--as per usual.)

This case is not all that difficult if Trump goes vigorously and exclusively on the attack.  Holding out hopes of hunkering down in a bunker of self-pardoning—or even mentioning again the prospect of self-pardoning—would precipitate a barrage of polemical howitzers that would only inflict horrible damage on Trump and his team.  The bunker of self-pardon is not even a bunker.  It is a worthlessly shallow foxhole that would simply disappear.

The Trump legal team needs to focus all of its energies on a shock-and-awe offensive against Mueller.   That is not a strategy of desperation.  It’s the right thing to do.  And that makes it a winning strategy.   

[montanajoe]

I think Trump who is a grifter who has bamboozled a lot of good desperate folks. This will be his graceful exit..

[the_doc]

I think Trump who is a grifter who has bamboozled a lot of good desperate folks. This will be his graceful exit..

I actually think a lot of the folks he has bamboozled are not good folks. (LOL)

If you will check my posts, you will discover that I have never been clearly bamboozled, since I have never trusted Trump overly much--and I certainly don't mind saying I didn't vote in the 2016 election.  But DJT is our POTUS, and I like most of what he is doing now. 

The worst bamboozled folks are the ones who think Mueller is a hero who is trying to save the Republic.   

[montanajoe]

I actually think a lot of the folks he has bamboozled are not good folks. (LOL)...

I believe in giving the benefit of the doubt..

If you check my posts you will find I am a proud NT who believes Trump is not only a grifter but a cynically evil half wit whose intent is to destroy the Republic. I often say who knew the anti-Christ would have orange hair...

[Sanguine]

I actually think a lot of the folks he has bamboozled are not good folks. (LOL)

If you will check my posts, you will discover that I have never been clearly bamboozled, since I have never trusted Trump overly much--and I certainly don't mind saying I didn't vote in the 2016 election.  But DJT is our POTUS, and I like most of what he is doing now. 

The worst bamboozled folks are the ones who think Mueller is a hero who is trying to save the Republic.  

I have to agree with that last bit.

[Concerned]

I think Trump who is a grifter who has bamboozled a lot of good desperate folks. This will be his graceful exit..

I agree about how many people he has bambooled (e.g., lock her up and Mexico paying for the wall). I'm actually surprised at how many otherwise relatively bright folks have fallen for this con man.

[Smokin Joe]

I agree about how many people he has bambooled (e.g., lock her up and Mexico paying for the wall). I'm actually surprised at how many otherwise relatively bright folks have fallen for this con man.

Well, we'll see if the swamp gets drained, or if it persists with a shift in the fauna. Some would think the latter "winning', but a swamp is a swamp.

[the_doc]

@Concerned
@montanajoe
@Sanguine
@Smokin Joe
@Quix

I agree about how many people he has bambooled (e.g., lock her up and Mexico paying for the wall). I'm actually surprised at how many otherwise relatively bright folks have fallen for this con man.

DJT definitely has the "skillset" and objectives-oriented ingenuity of a con man (look at his Art of the Deal, for example).  That, in turn, could very well explain why you, like most Americans, haven't noticed what our inarguably bizarre and very, very shifty POTUS is actually doing. 

Trumps's first step is not to "lock her up."  It's not even his second or third step.  Remember:  Trump has also promised to drain the Swamp, not just "lock up crooked Hillary."  He will lock her up when he is ready to pull the plug on the entire Swamp, not just HRC's corner of it.

This means that the President first needs to purge the bad actors from the FBI--since the FBI guys are the ones who will have to execute most of the arrest warrants and organize the evidence against Swamp denizens.  (Firing a bunch of Deep State folks in a few Executive Branch agencies is by no means sufficient to "drain the Swamp."  Trump has to attack the filthy Swamp with a veritable flamethrower of prosecutions.)   

Next, President Trump has to re-take control of the DOJ (the department that obtains the indictments and prosecutes the defendants).  After that, he has to root out corrupt bureaucrats in the State Department and purge some really, really bad guys from the CIA--because the State Department and the CIA appear to have the worst of the worst International Swamp denizens.  (Yeah, the D.C. Swamp is actually just part of a Global Swamp.  I believe Trump correctly understands that the Swamp has to be drained globally, not just in America.  If he neglects the Global Socialist Cabal, the global filth will just quickly flow back in.)

(By the way, Trump's seemingly crude, undiplomatic policies and remarks to other countries have pissed off a lot of Heads of State, but Trump's rhetoric and deeds have manifestly emboldened the citizens of several countries to start draining their own parts of the Global Swamp.  Oppressed people all over the world are following American politics like never before in history. [Some pundits have predicted, by the way, that Merkel will be gone by November;  also, the EU [a political project that happens to be very precious to the Globalists] is beginning to unravel.) 

***

Back to the domestic mess:  I submit that cleaning up the FBI, DOJ, State Department and CIA are just interim objectives.  Trump is quietly using his military intelligence team and a number of reliable federal prosecutors [with more public help from a few patriots in the Congress] to investigate all of the aforementioned agencies--but the round-up of seditious crooks will likely reach into every federal agency plus the Congress itself and the federal Court System and many if not most State governments as well.

(And yeah, the Sanctuary State(s) and Cities have to be crushed for their sheer rebellion against our Constitutional Republic;  also, rampant voting fraud has to be stopped at the level of the State and local governments.  The two crimes of illegal immigration and illegal voting are crucial to the Deep State's mechanism for continually feeding sewage into the Deep State Swamp. 

Furthermore, Trump still has to find a way to build the wall, even if he hasn't yet figured out how he is going to get it funded.  In one way or another, the active duty U.S. military is likely going to be used to enforce federal law [in California, at least, and not just on California's southern border].)

Draining the Swamp in a meaningful way will also require that our POTUS secure and organize damaging evidence of a massive and truly seditious conspiracy by the MSM, by Hollywood, and by crooked "crony capitalists" (who are actually Socialists, in the final analysis).  All of this legally actionable evidence seems to be coming together at this time (largely from the tedious work of Trump's military intelligence personnel, I am told).

What I am saying, in essence, is that Trump's challenge is orders of magnitude more difficult than his conservative but impatient detractors realize.  Trump has to juggle a zillion issues concurrently.  And I haven't even mentioned Trump's fight with the rogue prosecutor who is endlessly harassing Trump in a desperate attempt to thwart Trump's WAR against the Deep State.

***

As it turns out, the Deep State's war against the United States started decades ago, but Trump's part in America's counteroffensive against the Deep State began in 2015, when top military personnel met secretly with him and persuaded him to run for President.  (Our military was appalled to see what they regarded as the impending collapse of the Republic.  Trump was likewise appalled at the scope of our necessary war against sedition and treason--which explains why he ran for office and, after winning the 2016 election, immediately appointed so many military men and women to his White House team.)   

When Anthony Weiner's laptop files came to light (well, barely came to light), Hillary Clinton definitely became the prime candidate for prosecution (in spite of the crooked FBI's exoneration of HRC).  Trump could have her indicted and arrested at any time;  this goes without saying.   

Unbeknownst to the public, however, the laptop files reportedly revealed almost unfathomably vicious, sordid corruption throughout the politics and high society of the United States in a way that linked America's vicious and powerful crooks to vicious and powerful crooks all over the world.  The corruption was so pervasive and so filthy that an anonymous leaker, supposedly an FBI agent, started up a Dark Website a couple of years ago, on which website he warned that the revelations from the laptop were so damning and so widespread in scope (throughout America and the world) and so hideous (involving damning evidence of murderous pedophilia) that he feared that any immediate release of the files on the laptop could start a full-fledged civil war in America--likely collapsing our entire government--and might even start a third World War.

At least one high-level official in the NYPD has corroborated the leaker's report of the heinousness of the criminality revealed on the laptop, especially the video files Weiner kept in his "Insurance Folder."  Two of the NYPD detectives who reportedly had to watch the videos before the laptop was turned over to the FBI have since been murdered in ambush situations.   

***

The preservation of America's national sanity likely depends on a carefully controlled release of the amazing and awful details of an ENORMOUS network of corruption in practically every aspect of American life.  This controlled-release approach has been called "the red-pilling of America."  The public simply can't swallow all of the toxic stuff all at once.  Unfortunately, this means that the public is not ready for HRC to be arrested.  Why?  Because as soon as Hillary Clinton is prosecuted, practically the whole, ungodly mess of today's world and today's America will explode into the light.

When President Trump deems that the time is right, Hillary will be subjected to a military arrest for a litany of crimes against humanity and against the Republic.  These will include capital crimes, including sedition and treason.  Obama himself will likely be arrested in the same time frame.  And there will be tens of thousands of other federal prosecutions.  The number of federal indictments formed and sealed between November 1, 2017, and today is over 35,000.  This is the highest number in American history--in, fact, about fifty times higher than the normal rate of sealed federal indictments filed in our court system.  The flamethrower of prosecutions will be the biggest in American history--and probably the biggest ever in a true democracy.  The Nuremburg trials will seem puny by comparison. 

Thus it would appear that Jeff Sessions has been very, very busy.  (A lot of Trump's complaints about Sessions have likely been "political theater," the director of which production would surely be the Con-Man-in-Chief.)   

Anyway, Hillary Clinton knows what's happening.  So does Obama.  This is why they have pulled out all stops to take down Trump.  Remember:  Hillary herself is reported to have said "If that [bleep] wins the election, we will all hang by nooses!"

(Notice that she said "all."  She was talking about her entire conspiratorial network.  Notice also that she didn't merely say "We will all hang," but rather "hang by nooses."  The idea of hanging could be taken as a metaphor for just being in terrible trouble.  But she was talking about capital punishment.  [Well, I don't believe that our military uses hanging anymore, but I will charitably give her credit for having the right overall idea.]) 

[Quix]

Am inclined to agree with  you.

However, I do not believe God is going to allow Trump to be removed from office for a total of 8 years. I just don't. Time will tell.

I am dismayed at how many normally bright folks seem to be wearing very foggy glasses when it comes to assessing Trump's good points. Thankfully, God, who has raised him up to do HIS bidding--has  no such problem.

Trump can't accomplish much in his own strength--though above average as Presidents go. The size of this task REQUIRES God's resources and the prayers of all faithful believers.

@Mesaclone
@Maj. Bill White
@Oceander
@Smokin Joe
@Emjay
@edpc
@Sanguine

In my Post #154, I started summarizing the reasons why I maintain that the self-pardon defense is so bad that it would backfire on President Trump.   In that earlier post, I presented what has been called the “Natural Law argument” against self-pardon.  That is the best-known argument against self-pardons, and I regard it as devastating in and of itself.  As it turns out, however, Trump’s position gets much, much worse when we look further.

THE PRESENT POST CONTINUES MY ARGUMENT AGAINST THE IDEA OF SELF-PARDONS:

Argument based on Federalist Paper #74:  A pardon is an act of mercy.

The very idea of mercy inherent in a proper pardon presupposes that someone in a position of power grants the pardon out of a compassion for the plight of another soul suffering under the often harsh terms of criminal justice.  Alexander Hamilton manifestly considered the power to grant a pardon to be a noble provision in the Constitution in that a pardon exemplifies a spirit of true charity, of kindness.

(Thanks to @Maj. Bill White for the above insights concerning Federalist Paper #74.)

One law professor has summarized the correct view of pardons by declaring that a pardon is for mercy, rather than for self-enrichment.  The Constitution does not say this, but Hamilton implies as much.

Although there have been Presidential and gubernatorial pardons that we suspect to have been essentially purchased from corrupt Executives (e.g., some of the pardons granted by Bill Clinton just before he left the White House], these would amount to abuses of the power to pardon.  The important principle that remains is that a pardon is decidedly ignoble if it is given for the benefit of the pardoner.
 
That being the case, a self-pardon is the most disgusting scenario of all for a so-called “pardon.” 

My bottom-line point is that our Framers never intended their words to be twisted to yield a “loophole” that a rogue President could jump through to escape criminal justice.  An Originalist lawyer—i.e. the only kind of lawyer who honestly and consistently upholds the Constitution—would never parse the language of the Pardon Clause to claim that a POTUS has an absolute right to pardon himself.
 
(The fact that a defense attorney might posture in an attempt to save his Presidential client’s neck—especially when he is trying to save the POTUS from an unjust prosecution—is an altogether different matter.  The problem with such posturing in this particular case is that a self-pardon could be quickly declared invalid.  I don’t see how a federal judge would be able, given the courtroom setting, to duck the matter or even delay a ruling against the “pardon.” The Originalists’ evidence against self-pardoning is, in fact, so overwhelming that the theory of self-pardon should never be brought up, in my opinion.)

***

Argument from the root meaning of “pardon”:  A pardon is necessarily a two-party transaction.

Since this is a serious exegetical argument, it ought to be especially sobering to lawyers.  (See below.)

When we speak of “a pardon,” that combination of a noun with an article adjective would cause most people to think in narrow, technical (?) terms—i.e., most people would think about the noun “pardon” being used in the U.S. Constitution.  Since the Constitution doesn’t bother to describe fully the overall characteristics of a proper pardon, most people would think of "a pardon" in what they believe is a cautiously narrow way--i.e., defining the noun ”pardon” as simply an exemption of a criminal from retributive justice.  But that exemption from punishment is ultimately just the immediate (and undeniably consequential) result of the larger act of pardoning.  In other words, there is more to a pardon than merely the result of the pardon.   

To fully appreciate what I mean, we need to examine the verb “pardon.”

If we bump into someone on a busy sidewalk, we almost reflexively say “Pardon me.”  And we always make this request of the person whom we bumped.  We do not shrug off the offense long enough to look around and find some uninvolved party from whom we might request a pardon.  An uninvolved party cannot pardon us.  Uninvolved parties would regard us as nuts if we were to say “Please pardon me for bumping into a lady a block or two from here.”

In short, the power to pardon lies only with the offended party.  This is a no-brainer.  The general idea of pardoning is a matter of forgiveness.  If you haven’t committed any offense whatsoever against me, the idea that I might choose to forgive you would be nonsensical.  There would be nothing whatsoever for me to forgive.

Here, then, is the proper, amplified definition of a pardon:  a pardon is a bestowal of full, complete forgiveness (including, of course, the ruling out of any vengeance or other retribution), which free-grace gift is sovereignly, mercifully granted by the offended party to a penitent petitioner (the fellow who caused the offense).       

(The only reason why a President [or a State Governor] can grant pardons to perpetrators of crimes against the State, by the way, is because the Executive is the administrative representative of the offended State.) 

And since the offender and the offended are necessarily two different parties, a self-pardon is a flagrant contradiction in terms.  In other words, a self-pardon is an impossibility by definition.  (Notice how this position dovetails with what I have already asserted based on Hamilton’s views of mercy.)  Heck, the reason why the Framers never bothered to elucidate in the Pardon Clause all of the features of a legally proper pardon is because they didn't regard such elucidation as needed. 

Hmmm....More on this later.

***

At this point, I would dare to claim that when we put this post with my Post #154, we have an ironclad case against self-pardoning for anything whatsoever.

Ah, but the President's hypothetical case gets even worse.  I have saved the most important argument for last.  (See my next post on this subject.  The good news is that if we abandon the Trump team's crappy theory of self-pardoning, Trump's case against Mueller crystallizes properly and powerfully.)

[Concerned]

Trumps's first step is not to "lock her up."  It's not even his second or third step.  Remember:  Trump has also promised to drain the Swamp, not just "lock up crooked Hillary."  He will lock her up when he is ready to pull the plug on the entire Swamp, not just HRC's corner of it.

I think only a con-man's supporters could argue that NOT doing what he said he'd do is actually doing what he said.   
   Promises kept, right?  It's absolutely amazing to me!  "Lock her up", "drain the swamp", Mexico paying for the wall, proposing a Constitutional Amendment for term limits,  -- I predict he'll do none of it.  EVER.   

@the_doc

[the_doc]

I think only a con-man's supporters could argue that NOT doing what he said he'd do is actually doing what he said.   
   Promises kept, right?  It's absolutely amazing to me!  "Lock her up", "drain the swamp", Mexico paying for the wall, proposing a Constitutional Amendment for term limits,  -- I predict he'll do none of it.  EVER.   

@the_doc

Well, you are just not paying attention to what Trump is doing to drain the swamp, the first steps of which are a necessary prelude to arresting Clinton and Obama and several thousand others. 

Remember:  Trump has been in office for only seventeen months.  And he has set a spectacular record for sealed indictments in the past eight months.

The wall is a high priority, but the recent omnibus bill blocked building the wall.  Trump is now doubling down on the need for the wall, and if motivated voters stomp on the Dems and RINOs in November--and I submit that the voters will do that, when they finally realize (likely by late summer) how deep and wide the Deep State Swamp is--Trump will get his wall in spite of the obstruction to date.  (Perhaps he will yet find a way to force Mexico to "pay for the wall" after it's built--but that cannot be a high priority at this time.)

It is not yet time to talk about term limits.  That needs to wait until after the November elections.

[Concerned]

Well, you are just not paying attention to what Trump is doing to drain the swamp, the first steps of which are a necessary prelude to arresting Clinton and Obama and several thousand others. 

Remember:  Trump has been in office for only seventeen months.  And he has set a spectacular record for sealed indictments in the past eight months.

The wall is a high priority, but the recent omnibus bill blocked building the wall.  Trump is now doubling down on the need for the wall, and if motivated voters stomp on the Dems and RINOs in November--and I submit that the voters will do that, when they finally realize (likely by late summer) how deep and wide the Deep State Swamp is--Trump will get his wall in spite of the obstruction to date.  (Perhaps he will yet find a way to force Mexico to "pay for the wall" after it's built--but that cannot be a high priority at this time.)

It is not yet time to talk about term limits.  That needs to wait until after the November elections.

What I have been paying attention to are Trump supporters saying how the FBI (Trump appointee) is corrupt; how the Department of Justice (Trump appointee) is corrupt; how the guy overseeing the Mueller investigation (Trump appointee) is corrupt.  How is this draining the swamp?  “Only the best people”, right?

If you think "Obama and several thousand others" are going to be arrested, I'm afraid you're delusional because I've seen no evidence whatsoever that's going to occur.

Relative to term limits, Trump is the one who promised a proposal for a Constitutional Amendment for those within his first 100 days.  That wasn't me.   That was him.  He's the one who broke that promise just like he has broken promises on Mexico paying for the wall, naming China a currency manipulator, locking her up, putting us on a path to eliminate the debt within his two terms, etc. etc. etc. etc.

@the_doc

[the_doc]

What I have been paying attention to are Trump supporters saying how the FBI (Trump appointee) is corrupt; how the Department of Justice (Trump appointee) is corrupt; how the guy overseeing the Mueller investigation (Trump appointee) is corrupt.  How is this draining the swamp?  “Only the best people”, right?

If you think "Obama and several thousand others" are going to be arrested, I'm afraid you're delusional because I've seen no evidence whatsoever that's going to occur.

Relative to term limits, Trump is the one who promised a proposal for a Constitutional Amendment for those within his first 100 days.  That wasn't me.   That was him.  He's the one who broke that promise just like he has broken promises on Mexico paying for the wall, naming China a currency manipulator, locking her up, putting us on a path to eliminate the debt within his two terms, etc. etc. etc. etc.

@the_doc

I have zinger retorts for all of your complaints.  But since you have dismissed everything I have said, I have decided not to trouble you any further. (LOL)

(But you really ought to brace yourself for the coming tsunami.)   

[edpc]

(But you really ought to brace yourself for the coming tsunami.)

You're going to have to define tsunami.  I don't want to expect Banda Aceh and get Madagascar.

[INVAR]

What I have been paying attention to are Trump supporters saying how the FBI (Trump appointee) is corrupt; how the Department of Justice (Trump appointee) is corrupt; how the guy overseeing the Mueller investigation (Trump appointee) is corrupt.  How is this draining the swamp?  “Only the best people”, right?

If you think "Obama and several thousand others" are going to be arrested, I'm afraid you're delusional because I've seen no evidence whatsoever that's going to occur.

Relative to term limits, Trump is the one who promised a proposal for a Constitutional Amendment for those within his first 100 days.  That wasn't me.   That was him.  He's the one who broke that promise just like he has broken promises on Mexico paying for the wall, naming China a currency manipulator, locking her up, putting us on a path to eliminate the debt within his two terms, etc. etc. etc. etc.

We have heard this song and dance before by those hoping for justice from a wholly corrupted government.

[corbe]

   So Concise, Thanks @INVAR

[the_doc]

You're going to have to define tsunami.  I don't want to expect Banda Aceh and get Madagascar.

LOL.  You'll know it when it hits, probably late this summer.

[Formerly Once-Ler]

I have zinger retorts for all of your complaints.  But since you have dismissed everything I have said, I have decided not to trouble you any further. (LOL)

(But you really ought to brace yourself for the coming tsunami.)

@the_doc

That's Right @Concerned.  As President Trump says frequently "You just wait.  You'll see!  You'll find out.  Believe me."

[the_doc]

@Mesaclone
@Maj. Bill White
@Oceander
@Smokin Joe
@Emjay
@edpc
@Sanguine

[As I said in an earlier post,] the Trump legal team needs to focus all of its energies on a shock-and-awe offensive against Mueller.   That is not a strategy of desperation.  It’s the right thing to do.  And that makes it a winning strategy.

This post is the final post of four posts arguing that the Trump team’s threat to use a supposed prerogative of self-pardoning is the wrong defense against a possible criminal indictment by Mueller. 

More to the point, and perhaps even more important, abandoning the self-pardoning defense actually   BOLSTERS the legally crucial argument that a regular criminal indictment of a sitting POTUS is DISALLOWED by the Constitution.  (If, on the other hand, the Trump team asserts a self-pardon defense against a criminal indictment, that very defense is a tacit admission that the indictment is proper—which amounts to a legal concession that the Trump team MUST NOT MAKE.)

***

SUMMARY OF THE ARGUMENT:

There are many arguments against allowing a criminal court indictment of a sitting POTUS, but here’s one that everyone seems to have overlooked:  The Framers explicitly ruled out any self-pardon for thwarting a President’s impeachment—doing so in passing, as it were, in their discussion of impeachments--but they did not do bother to rule out a self-pardon “loophole” in the case of a criminal (court) indictment.  Why not?  It’s largely because there is no such "self-pardon" loophole to be ruled out.
 
Again, why not?  It’s because a sitting POTUS cannot be indicted in the first place—i.e. apart from the impeachment scenario, there was/is no self-pardon scenario to be ruled out by the Framers.

In short, claiming a Presidential prerogative of self-pardon in the face of an unconstitutional criminal indictment is not a back-up defense.  It is a disaster.  The Trump team’s well-publicized defense theory is diametrically OPPOSED to the only correct defense. 

(The only proper BACK-UP defense against Mueller is that of indicting and arresting Mueller sooner rather than later. That correct defense is a slam-dunk defense against a manifestly dirty prosecutor.  [Heck, the best defense is always a good offense.])

[Weird Tolkienish Figure]

You just know that the nominate Justice is going to be asked about this during the hearing.