# Can the President pardon himself? **URL:** \ **Category:** Great Debates\ **Created:** [July 21, 2017, 2:27pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/can-the-president-pardon-himself/791800 "2017-07-21T14:27:42Z")\ **Posts on this page:** 14\ **Page:** 3
**Author:** ![John\_Mace](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/john_mace/32/185_2.png) [@John\_Mace](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/John_Mace)\ **Post date:** [July 22, 2017, 6:11pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/can-the-president-pardon-himself/791800/41 "2017-07-22T18:11:12Z")
> [@BobLibDem](#): > > [Perhaps not.](https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/no-trump-cant-pardon-himself-the-constitution-tells-us-so/2017/07/21/f3445d74-6e49-11e7-b9e2-2056e768a7e5_story.html?utm_term=.ba7f6cd9f736) > > > [@](#): > > > > Can a president pardon himself? Four days before Richard Nixon resigned, his own Justice Department’s Office of Legal Counsel opined no, citing “the fundamental rule that no one may be a judge in his own case.”… > > > > The Constitution specifically bars the president from using the pardon power to prevent his own impeachment and removal. It adds that any official removed through impeachment remains fully subject to criminal prosecution. That provision would make no sense if the president could pardon himself. > > The above written by Laurence Tribe and Richard Painter, law professors as Harvard and University of Minnesota respectively. > > Of course, one never knows what the Supreme Court would say. It’s unthinkable that Alito, Thomas, and Roberts would rule against a Republican. “Judgment in Cases of Impeachment shall not extend further than to removal from Office, and disqualification to hold and enjoy any Office of honor, Trust or Profit under the United States: but the Party convicted shall nevertheless be liable and subject to Indictment, Trial, Judgment and Punishment, according to Law.” Emphasis added. I’d say that’s sloppy paraphrasing for a legal scholar. The word “fully” is not in the text, but it serves to add an extra little oomph to the argument. There is no indication that the constitution says that an impeached officer is subject to the law in ways that other folks are not (i.e., ineligible for a pardon) ---
**Author:** ![RickJay](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/r/bb73d2/32.png) [@RickJay](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/RickJay)\ **Post date:** [July 22, 2017, 6:51pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/can-the-president-pardon-himself/791800/42 "2017-07-22T18:51:54Z")
> [@DSYoungEsq](#): > > No. Not even remotely true. > > The pardon would preclude the prosecution in the first place. All he has to do is assert that he’s been pardoned of any _possible_ crime that might be charged. He’s not admitting anything in the process. The acceptance of a pardon implicitly includes admission you did it, which is why the pardoned person must affirmatively accept the pardon (for it to actually accomplish anything, such as get you out of prison.) We’ve had this discussion already, regarding Burdick v. United States. ---
**Author:** ![elucidator](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/e/8edcca/32.png) [@elucidator](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/elucidator)\ **Post date:** [July 22, 2017, 7:59pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/can-the-president-pardon-himself/791800/43 "2017-07-22T19:59:21Z")
Which has wide agreement among legal scholars, yes. But not _universal_ agreement! So long as there is the slightest opening to be exploited… ---
**Author:** ![John\_Mace](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/john_mace/32/185_2.png) [@John\_Mace](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/John_Mace)\ **Post date:** [July 22, 2017, 9:02pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/can-the-president-pardon-himself/791800/44 "2017-07-22T21:02:23Z")
So if you are pardoned for a felony and you live in a state that forbids felons from voting, are you barred from voting? I’m guessing yes, but I know it’s often unwise to guess about legal matters. And does it matter if the pardon is pre-emptive or not? PS: Do not need answer fast. 🙂 ---
**Author:** ![JRDelirious](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/jrdelirious/32/9531_2.png) [@JRDelirious](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/JRDelirious)\ **Post date:** [July 22, 2017, 10:03pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/can-the-president-pardon-himself/791800/45 "2017-07-22T22:03:11Z")
> [@John\_Mace](#): > > So if you are pardoned for a felony and you live in a state that forbids felons from voting, are you barred from voting? I’m guessing yes, but I know it’s often unwise to guess about legal matters. And does it matter if the pardon is pre-emptive or not? Depending on the state, a so-called “full” pardon may moot any possible civil and penal consequences including the voting elegibility restrictions. In some others this has its own procedure for reinstatement/ In the case of a preemptive pardon, you will never even have been charged or tried. So you will never have been a \*convicted \*felon and would never have lost the right. As it stands, the majority of states nowadays only disenfranchise for the term of the sentence (some including parole time, some only incarceration) and if an unconditional pardon or commutation voids or ends the sentence, this would end the restriction. Maine and non-state Puerto Rico do not disenfranchise regardless of the crime. ---
**Author:** ![UltraVires](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/u/ecccb3/32.png) [@UltraVires](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/UltraVires)\ **Post date:** [July 23, 2017, 3:31am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/can-the-president-pardon-himself/791800/46 "2017-07-23T03:31:26Z")
> [@Ambrosio\_Spinola](#): > > Interestingly, this question came up regarding the issue of double jeopardy. In the case of _Aleman v. The Honorable Judges of the Circuit Court of Cook County_, the Seventh Circuit determined that [if you bribe a judge to acquit you in a bench trial, you were never “in jeopardy”](http://caselaw.findlaw.com/us-7th-circuit/1420701.html) and as such the State is free to retry you despite the acquittal. > > A pardon is different, since after all the President can basically pardon anyone on a whim, it doesn’t matter if they’re guilty or anything else really. I suspect that a court might suggest that the proper remedy is to impeach the President but that the pardons would still be good. I agree that is a very likely judicial outcome, but as it has never been tested, we aren’t sure. Take the following two scenarios: 1. Trump announces that every white male over age 50 who has been convicted, or may be convicted, of any federal crime from today and ever before is unconditionally pardoned. 2. Trump announces that the first 25 people who contribute $1 million or more to the RNC will receive a pardon for any crimes that they might have committed. Both of these are obvious perversions of the pardon power. An argument could be made that the 5th amendment, requiring due process, having been passed later than the Pardon Clause, implicitly amended the pardon power to require that pardons be handed out on the basis of justice, and not merely at the Presidential whim. And similar to the Double Jeopardy cases you cite, if a person was granted a pardon that was not based upon due process or traditional methods of discretion related to pardons, that the pardon is void ab initio. But, it remains an open question. ---
**Author:** ![BigT](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/bigt/32/12044_2.png) [@BigT](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/BigT)\ **Post date:** [July 23, 2017, 3:47am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/can-the-president-pardon-himself/791800/47 "2017-07-23T03:47:20Z")
> [@XT](#): > > Well, he hasn’t done anything yet. And our system has been working for over 200 years at this point, so I’m not sure I’m seeing this as a ‘huge flaw’, since, again, no one has actually tested it. Our system is also geared towards refinement, so if someone DOES test it with negative consequences or result we can always modify the system to tweak this aspect. > > Myself, I’ll wait to see someone actually show it’s a problem before saying our system is hugely flawed because of this theoretical possibility. > > Again, I don’t think we need to jerk our knee and ‘fix’ a system that hasn’t actually been shown to be broken yet. Democracy IS great, and our system is flexible enough that if there is a problem we can just fix it and move on. You aren’t actually making an argument. How long something has been working has no bearing on whether something is flawed. There is a clear loophole here. Even if the president can’t pardon himself, he can pardon others to benefit himself. Trump’s current situation may have exposed the flaw, but it’s always been there. It’s not a kneejerk reaction at all. It’s just a simple analysis of a system. I don’t wait on the code I write to actually fail before I fix it. I fix it when I become aware of the problem. Security professionals don’t wait until some hacker is exploiting a bug before warning companies, and the companies don’t wait until they are exploited to fix it. Imagine this: You buy a car. It’s been working for years. But then there is a recall. Someone at the company finds that, in a certain circumstance, the brakes could just stop working. And they come up with a fix. Would you choose not to get it, claiming that your car has been working for so many years? I sure as hell wouldn’t. A flaw is a flaw. Trump was elected. Someone like Trump should never have been elected. He ran on an authoritarian, nationalist platform. He had so many flaws that the democratic system is supposed to stop. But it didn’t. The primaries were supposed to knock him out. They didn’t. The election was supposed to stop him. It didn’t. Corruption is being seen as no big deal by half the country. To pretend that we are not in danger is foolhardy, and we need to actually fix the problems in our democracy. Before someone who is actually good at being a fascist is elected. ---
**Author:** ![UltraVires](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/u/ecccb3/32.png) [@UltraVires](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/UltraVires)\ **Post date:** [July 23, 2017, 4:13am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/can-the-president-pardon-himself/791800/48 "2017-07-23T04:13:00Z")
> [@BigT](#): > > You aren’t actually making an argument. How long something has been working has no bearing on whether something is flawed. > > There is a clear loophole here. Even if the president can’t pardon himself, he can pardon others to benefit himself. Trump’s current situation may have exposed the flaw, but it’s always been there. > > It’s not a kneejerk reaction at all. It’s just a simple analysis of a system. I don’t wait on the code I write to actually fail before I fix it. I fix it when I become aware of the problem. Security professionals don’t wait until some hacker is exploiting a bug before warning companies, and the companies don’t wait until they are exploited to fix it. > > Imagine this: You buy a car. It’s been working for years. But then there is a recall. Someone at the company finds that, in a certain circumstance, the brakes could just stop working. And they come up with a fix. > > Would you choose not to get it, claiming that your car has been working for so many years? I sure as hell wouldn’t. A flaw is a flaw. > > Trump was elected. Someone like Trump should never have been elected. He ran on an authoritarian, nationalist platform. He had so many flaws that the democratic system is supposed to stop. But it didn’t. The primaries were supposed to knock him out. They didn’t. The election was supposed to stop him. It didn’t. Corruption is being seen as no big deal by half the country. > > To pretend that we are not in danger is foolhardy, and we need to actually fix the problems in our democracy. Before someone who is actually good at being a fascist is elected. I couldn’t disagree more with almost everything you said, but I only wanted to comment that law is not an exact science like computer programming. In law, we deal with people, who cannot be reduced to a string of 1s and 0s. A huge part of the Constitution is the recognition or belief that a representative democracy, in almost all cases, will adequately reflect the will of the people, and we need not protect the people against absurd hypotheticals which are unlikely to ever happen. A cynic might argue that nothing in the Constitution would prohibit a state legislature from punishing a parking violation with life imprisonment, or allowing a home owner to tie up a suspected burglar and cut his dick off. But that is the nature of our system that NO majority would ever do such a thing or enact such a thing. If it so happens that majorities are that out of control, then we need a king or a dictator instead of a representative democracy. It is clear that you are disappointed that Trump won, but to make the leap that extra-Constitutional action, or a revolution almost, needs to happen is simply unsupported by any reasonable inference from the evidence. ---
**Author:** ![Johnny\_Ace](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/j/6bbea6/32.png) [@Johnny\_Ace](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Johnny_Ace)\ **Post date:** [July 23, 2017, 4:18am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/can-the-president-pardon-himself/791800/49 "2017-07-23T04:18:47Z")
> [@UltraVires](#): > > A cynic might argue that nothing in the Constitution would prohibit a state legislature from punishing a parking violation with life imprisonment, or allowing a home owner to tie up a suspected burglar and cut his dick off. But that is the nature of our system that NO majority would ever do such a thing or enact such a thing. Maybe not in the Constitution proper, but certainly in the Bill of Rights (8th Amendment). ---
**Author:** ![UltraVires](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/u/ecccb3/32.png) [@UltraVires](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/UltraVires)\ **Post date:** [July 23, 2017, 5:23am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/can-the-president-pardon-himself/791800/50 "2017-07-23T05:23:49Z")
> [@Johnny\_Ace](#): > > Maybe not in the Constitution proper, but certainly in the Bill of Rights (8th Amendment). Imprisonment is not a cruel or unusual punishment, and a homeowner giving out pre/extra judicial punishment is not state action. ---
**Author:** ![Johnny\_Ace](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/j/6bbea6/32.png) [@Johnny\_Ace](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Johnny_Ace)\ **Post date:** [July 23, 2017, 5:34am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/can-the-president-pardon-himself/791800/51 "2017-07-23T05:34:03Z")
> [@UltraVires](#): > > Imprisonment is not a cruel or unusual punishment, and a homeowner giving out pre/extra judicial punishment is not state action. Life for a traffic ticket? Try to run that one past ANY judge, let alone an apellate court. ---
**Author:** ![John\_Mace](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/john_mace/32/185_2.png) [@John\_Mace](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/John_Mace)\ **Post date:** [July 23, 2017, 1:57pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/can-the-president-pardon-himself/791800/52 "2017-07-23T13:57:05Z")
> [@Johnny\_Ace](#): > > Maybe not in the Constitution proper, but certainly in the Bill of Rights (8th Amendment). > [@UltraVires](#): > > Imprisonment is not a cruel or unusual punishment, and a homeowner giving out pre/extra judicial punishment is not state action. This is an interesting discussion. First, I would say that the BoR is as much a part of the Constitution as anything else. No need to make a distinction. 1. But are there no SCOTUS cases where the cruel and unusual punishment clause was successfully used to argue that a given sentence was simply not commensurate with the the severity of crime? One that comes to mind, although it might not quite be applicable, is the striking down of the death penalty for minors. That is, the penalty itself is not unconstitutional, but applied as it was to minors is a problem. 2. Moving on to “the cutting off of dicks of burglars”, I don’t think the 8th applies since it’s not part of the sentence of of the court. But surely some other provision of the constitution would apply. Due process? ---
**Author:** ![BobLibDem](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/boblibdem/32/3149_2.png) [@BobLibDem](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/BobLibDem)\ **Post date:** [July 24, 2017, 6:53pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/can-the-president-pardon-himself/791800/53 "2017-07-24T18:53:16Z")
Let’s assume for the sake of argument that he can pardon himself. Can he pardon himself for things he might do in the future? Can he do the extreme and say “I hereby pardon myself from the moment of my immaculate conception until the time when I leave this earthly existence and take my rightful place to rule over God and heaven”? ---
**Author:** ![Bricker](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/b/977dab/32.png) [@Bricker](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Bricker)\ **Post date:** [July 24, 2017, 7:24pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/can-the-president-pardon-himself/791800/54 "2017-07-24T19:24:46Z")
> [@BobLibDem](#): > > Let’s assume for the sake of argument that he can pardon himself. Can he pardon himself for things he might do in the future? Can he do the extreme and say “I hereby pardon myself from the moment of my immaculate conception until the time when I leave this earthly existence and take my rightful place to rule over God and heaven”? No. A pardon cannot affect future crimes. [Previous page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/can-the-president-pardon-himself/791800.md?page=2)