Should, or could Trump pardon himself?

I don't know if Trump will take the chance and risk going to prison. He knows what he has done. I think Pence would pardon Trump. If Pence expects to run for any official position he will need the support of Trumpists. The crowd he would pay a political price with would not vote for him anyway.

 

Very likely he was at one time in his military career. Many special forces types were waterboarded to teach them how to resist questioning.

 

The Constitution says the president has the power to grant pardons. Keyword "grant", a world that means transferring something to another entity. Hence, a president can't grant a pardon to himself.

But then, that's just the plain English, so the Trump cult will reject it.

Think of it this way. Under the "A president can self-pardon!" rule, Nancy Pelosi could shoot Trump and Pence dead, immediately recite the presidential oath, and then immediately pardon herself for the murders. According to conservatives, that's a sensible policy to have.

 

Nobody should be above the law. Nevertheless there are some that are.

 

The Constitution lists only one exception to the pardon authority, impeachment. You are correct that a self-pardon will likely be litigated. If SCOTUS rules that he cannot pardon himself then they would be simply replacing the Constitution with their own beliefs -- not an uncommon occurrence.

 

Winning isn’t enough. They want their fantasies of trump in an orange jump suit. Nothing can quell the evil thirst of the left

 

That's false. SCOTUS has ruled on the constitutionality of a number of things not specifically written into the constitution, such as penumbra rights, the concept that of one thing is written, it presumes other things. For example, the Constitution grants congress the power of impeachment. Is there anything written about Congress providing 'oversight'? No, but it is presumed because one cannot impeach without the powers inherit in oversight responsibilities, one presumes the other. The point being, the constitution cannot possibly cover every little damn thing that intelligent and reasonable men understand and would presume to be true, assuming that such men are men of honor acting in good faith in the first place. It is my view that the founding fathers made one big mistake, and that was they assumed presidents would all act in good faith. Well, Trump has proven they made a mistake, as he does not operate in good faith, he is not an honorable man. Therefore, there needs to be a thorough review and legislation enacted to prevent future Trumps from doing similar things that no honorable man acting in good faith would ever do ( such as pardoning oneself ).

Similarly, self-pardon will be shot down because of what is written in the constitution which presumes that a president, therefore, cannot self-pardon ( it isn't for the often cited reason) ....'

https://www.washingtonpost.com/opin...5b045a-26dd-11e8-874b-d517e912f125_story.html

This [idea that a President cannot self pardon] is not because of some abstract notion of political morality or a vague commitment to the rule of law. It is not because of the maxim, “No one may be the judge in his own case,” because a pardon is an executive action, not a judicial act. Rather, the answer lies in a neglected part of the Constitution: Article II, Section 3, which directs that the president “shall take Care that the Laws be faithfully executed.”


Therefore, your premise, which goes something like this, 'if it's not specifically written in the constitution, and SCOTUS rules on it, they are injecting their own beliefs' is FALSE.

Also note that the term 'presume' has a range of probability, from the moderately probable to the 99.9999% probable.

For example, if I wake up in the morning and notice the entire landscape is covered with snow as far as the eyes can see, that before I went to bed, there was no covering of snow, therefore, I can PRESUME with 99.9999% probability of being correct that it snowed during the night while I was asleep.

In fact, I push it to 100%.

The point is, 'presumed' is being used in this sense, regarding SCOTUS rulings, because they would not so rule if that were not true.

 

As our newest supreme Court justice has stated "no one is above the law".

No, a president cannot pardon himself.