As I’ve said before: current Supreme Court precedents on the pardon power are fairly expansive, but precedents can always be revisited. And in this case, would be. Rapidly.
Perhaps; perhaps even very likely. But if that actually happened, I at least, would consider it a problem. As much as we might hate it, Trump is the president. Duly elected and all that. And he does have this power, and there were no prior constraints set on it of this nature. If that is changed retroactively, I would consider it, while with much better intentions, still no less an assault on our laws and government than the attempt to change the results of a valid vote are. It would be an attempt to change things, retroactively, when you do not like the results.
I’m not in favor of retroactively changing things because we don’t like the results in the case of elections, nor am I in favor of doing it because an elected official exercises a power in a manner that we suddenly find to be unacceptable.
The constitution states:
The President … shall have Power to grant Reprieves and Pardons for Offenses against the United States, except in Cases of impeachment.
Judges follow the law as written, not the law as intended. Many cases have been decided based on the exact phrasing of a statute, or because the placement of a comma changes the meaning.
There has been some discussion of the argument that the law as written means an impeached president loses the power to issue pardons. This wasn’t the intention of the constitution, but it is grammatically arguable. I’ve seen lawyers saying that this could happen. SCOTUS might invalidate any pardon he issues, based upon this interpretation.
If he did that he’d get whacked.
And hopefully then Biden would pardon them.
I think this misinterprets Trump’s vindictiveness. He would definitely do many things that “got back” at his perceived enemies but his mind has no imagination and it’s largely tit-for-tat kind of stuff. The pardons wouldn’t be a direct response to any slights and he’d have to deal with freeing lots of liberals and minorities, including some he put into prison.
Also, Trump appears to view pardons as a way get put people in debt to him. He doesn’t care about the people in Federal prison unless they worked for him or they’re famous, like Lil Wayne. I’m sure he has fantasies about Lil Wayne writing songs about Trump and singing his praises at concerts.
Not exactly. There are lots of different theories of jurisprudence and statutory and constitutional interpretation. One common one is that it is the intent of the drafter that matters, and the text is the best indicator of that intent. That’s the official statutory construction method for state laws in my state. There are other things that can be evidence of the drafters’ intent, in addition to the text, like legislative history. And, sometimes, a novel kind of argument can win out. (Especially in Supreme Courts).
If Trump drastically misused the pardon power on his way out of office, I think some constraints might be found based in what the drafters of the constitution intended. No one thought to include a limit on the power to pardon oneself because no one would have thought anyone would try. It isn’t part of that power. (…is how that sort of reasoning might go.)
Since that would result in the release of all criminal immigration violators and a shitload of terrorists, I’m going to go out on a limb and guess that even the most avid originalist on SCOTUS would “find” a reason to overturn the pardon.