This may end up in great debates but I thought I would ask it here just in case there is a simple factual answer.
I’m picturing the scenarios like the following
Judge orders ICE to stop implementing Trump immigration order
ICE agents ignore judicial order
Judge holds Ice agents in contempt of court
Trump pardons ICE agents and tells them to keep doing what they were doing.
or
Congress subpoenas certain documents
Trump aide shreds requested documents
Trump aide is held in contempt of congress
Trump pardons aide.
Bonus question: If 2 hours before he resigned, Nixon had decided to pardon all of the Watergate conspirators, would there be anything that could be done to hold them accountable.
This. A president can do all sorts of things that are technically within their power that would be considered by most to be an abuse of power. Let’s say a president unilaterally sends troops into a dozen countries without a vote by Congress and thousands of Americans are being killed every month. Do you think Congress would sit by and wait to see what happens?
No but is the solution impeachment if he is using his legal authority? In the OP case, it would be very hard for the House to say a President using his constitutional pardon power an impeachable offense. In your case, I don’t think using the War Powers Act viz. a power given him by Congress can be an impeachable offense.
Unless you do it late in your lame duck term. Like Bush I did for a bunch of Iran-Contra people.
Note: there’s all sorts of legal delay tactics you can do to stave off having people do time or anything for a few years until you get to the end of your term. (E.g., the Iran-Contra stuff happened during the previous administration. Where Bush I was an involved Veep.)
Note that a PotUS right after a successful re-election, so not a lame duck, will sometimes get bold and throw out pardons. Impeaching the PotUS right after a win would put Congress in an awkward situation.
As alphaboi867 points out, anything is an impeachable offence if Congress considers it to be an impeachable offence. The courts won’t intervene.
But this one’s a no-brainer. The President using his executive powers to overthrow the rule of law? That’s more than grounds for impeachment; that’s a coup d’etat. Congress would be in there faster than a ferret on meths. Any circumstance in which it wasn’t would signal that US democracy was comprehensively cactus.
Of course, pardoning the offenders does not excuse them from lawsuits, I assume. Or contempt citations, or judicial orders forbidding the payroll department from paying them, or anything else the courts choose to do. Presumably if the court decides too many games are being played and issues an injunction forbidding the offenders from continuing to act as in their capacity as agents of the government… POTUS cannot change that.
If someone prevents a person from visiting the USA despite a valid visa, presumably they would have grounds to sue. The government would have to pony up any awarded damages. The court also has the authority and option to remove the minions’ qualified immunity if they blatantly violate their legal duty, leaving them personally liable for damages too. IIRC the POTUS pardon does not do anything for civil suits.
Didn’t Scooter Libby get the pardon treatment too?
A pardon doesn’t reverse a court order. If a judge issues an order and officials don’t obey it, Trump can potentially pardon the officials. But the order is still in effect. Anyone who was placed in custody in defiance of the order would be illegally held and would be released.
The impeachable offense wouldn’t be the pardons. It would be defying the court order. The President has no legal authority to defy a court order.
(I know some people argue that Lincoln defied court orders. But he didn’t. In his Merryman decision, Taney declared that Lincoln’s actions had been illegal - but he did not issue any order for Lincoln or anyone else. So Lincoln was able to argue he didn’t have to release Merryman because he hadn’t been ordered to do so.)
Scooter Libby was not pardoned, he had his sentence commuted. His conviction was not vacated, meaning he was disbarred and cannot practice law any more–about which he is extremely bitter. His patron Dick Cheney was also furious with W. that Libby didn’t get a full pardon.
The President’s pardon power is AFAIK unlimited. He can pardon anyone for anything as many times as he likes, including himself. But this only applies to federal crimes. A state might find it hard to bring a case against ICE agents for a lot of reasons, but a presidential pardon doesn’t exempt them from state (or local) prosecution.
Put another way, Ford’s blanket pardon of Nixon wouldn’t have protected him from prosecution for (pre-pardon) spraypainting pro-Nixon graffitti in Whittier.
But back to the OP, when was cop ever convicted of anything?
The visa is just a pre-clearance, for the guidance of an immigration officer, who still has wide discretion about whom to admit. For example, if you are arriving on a flight from certain African or South American countries with a US visa but no Yellow Fever vaccination card, you can be denied entry. If you arrive on foot with a US visa at the Mexican border and are penniless and disheveled and cannot satisfy an immigration officer that you have any means of support in the US, there is a very good chance that you will not be admitted.
Yes and no. The POTUS can pardon a criminal contempt convict because federal courts’ criminal contempt power derives from an act of Congress. See Ex Parte Grossman, 267 U.S. 87 (1925). He can’t pardon civil contemnors because civil contempt derives from the courts’ inherent authority established at common law and implicitly adopted in the Constitution. At least, that is the generally followed rule - SCOTUS hasn’t directly affirmed this principle but lower federal courts have. In re Nevitt, 117 Fed. 448 (8th Cir. 1902).
The scenario in the OP would be a civil contempt, incidentally; a criminal contempt charge is based on activity which occurs in court.
Libby was going to be disbarred regardless of a pardon. The DC Bar ruled that his disbarment would only be vacated if his conviction was overturned on appeal. He was disbarred for moral turpitude, not for being convicted, and a pardon would not have established that he “didn’t do it.”