Ted Cruz slams press for demanding instant answers on the ‘complicated’ question of presidential self-pardons

Cruz noted the Constitution says the president can pardon people and that the only limit it places on that power is that pardons can’t be used in cases of impeachment. But he noted that the Justice Department set a policy in the 1970s that says a president cannot pardon himself.

“In the 1970s, the Department of Justice did issue a legal opinion that the president cannot pardon himself, relying on the principle that nobody can be the judge in his own case,” Cruz tweeted.

[Trump’s view on self-pardons goes against Justice Department policy]

But he added that department opinion has not been tested in court, which means people at this point are “disagreeing in good faith” on whether a president can pardon himself.

Some in the media criticized Cruz on Monday for taking too long to answer the question about self-pardons and then taking 18 seconds to say this was not a constitutional issue he has studied. Cruz blasted those reporters in a series of additional tweets.

“Some dishonest journalists have attacked me for ‘taking 18 seconds’ to answer — without acknowledging that I was walking through the Capitol, late to a meeting, and simply ignoring a question that a reporter had called out at me (as senators do every single day in the Capitol),” Cruz said.

“This is not a question one should answer based on knee-jerk partisanship, as opposed to careful constitutional analysis,” Cruz said. “As for me, I still haven’t studied the issue at that level of detail, and I don’t intend to — because this is nothing more than an academic debate.”