Could the POTUS pardon every single felon with “the stroke of a pen”? For example, the president has a Brain Tumor no one knows about. It’s driving him crazy but no one can tell. Let’s assume he got elected on the religious ticket and says god will heal me I don’t need doctors. (bear with me, I am making a story here). So anyhow, the president is insane but he doesn’t act insane. He just has crazy thoughts he keeps to himself. He’s made some bad decisions lately that have his staff baffled but no one knows whats going on.
So on some random Tuesday morning the POTUS gets up and decides “I’m going to let all the prisoners go free”. Is there any way anyone or any group can stop him?
Yes that is the key factor. The president only has the power to pardon those who fall under federal jurisdictions. The power to pardon state criminals resides with the governors (with 50 variations on the law).
I don’t know if there have been any pardons that didn’t name the person being pardoned. There may be some sort of vagueness or lack of specificity challenge.
I think that if the president did pardon everybody there would be a quick movement to impeach his and some logic would be found to say that the pardons were not valid.
Carter issued a broad pardon to all Vietnam era draft dodgers. So its apparently possible to pardon people without actually naming them.
And you can also be vague about the crimes involved. Ford basically blanket pardoned Nixon for any crime he may have committed, without actually listing what those crimes were.
or if he takes away all the guns, or cedes our sovereignty to the UN, or any of the other things Obama has never shown any interest in EVER doing…
The Constitution gives the President the power to pardon whoever he wants. I assume the OP meant forgiving rather than commuting sentences. As was said before, I don’t it could be a blanket order. I think there would have to be an actual signed form for each individual so it would be many pen strokes, but yeah, he could do it.
And no, he could not be prosecuted for it.
But the notion of a sitting President going certifiably insane is interesting. Is there any legal mechanism to remove him from office if he spent 10 hours a day masturbating in the residence to pictures of LBJ? Insanity is not indictable, right?
For the president probably not much if he doesn’t care about his legacy.
The US legal system is not some computer program where is you are cleaver enough you can get it to do anything you want. It is implemented millions of individuals. The people opening the jail cells don’t open them because the president signed something. The open it because their boss said to do it and followed the procedure to do it. You have a long chain of people who have to agree to implement a policy. Something this radical would need a long time to implement and before it was implemented, there would be some legal argument saying the pardons are not valid.