Following President Donald Trump’s confident Monday proclamation that “I have the absolute right to PARDON myself,” Republican lawmakers were less concerned with whether such a decision would be legally possible, and more concerned with a different question: Why on earth would he even consider doing so?
“Politically, it would be a disaster,” said South Carolina Republican Lindsey Graham. “Legally, I don’t know.”
Members of Trump’s legal team, such as Rudy Giuliani, have said they believe Trump could employ a self-pardon—although the former mayor of New York added Sunday that it was “unthinkable” that the president would actually pull the trigger. Senate Republicans expressed varying views on the subject, but most agreed that the move would damage Trump’s presidency, likely irreversibly.
Earlier Monday, Senate Judiciary Chairman Chuck Grassley appeared skeptical of the idea. “If I were president of the United States and I had a lawyer that told me I could pardon myself, I think I would hire a new lawyer,” he told reporters. And Maine Republican Susan Collins predicted that a presidential self-pardon would hold “catastrophic implications for him and our country.”
Of course, if the president ever tried to exercise such a power, calls for impeachment would immediately follow, as Democrats made clear Monday. “Well, dependent on what the crime was, it well could be,” said Sen. Dianne Feinstein, the top Democrat on the Senate Judiciary Committee, when asked whether a self-pardon would constitute an impeachable offense.
Alabama Republican Richard Shelby said he thought a presidential self-pardon was possible, “but I don’t think I’d recommend that.” Oklahoman James Lankford said the conversation was a moot point, considering the legal challenges that would follow such a decision. “It’s kind of an odd conversation for the White House to be able to even have,” Lankford told reporters Monday night.
Still others were reluctant to weigh in on the matter. Idaho Republican Jim Risch declined to comment. And when asked whether he agreed with Trump about the president’s pardoning ability, Texas senator Ted Cruz fell silent for 18 seconds until, prompted by a reporter, he said that he hadn’t studied that particular aspect of constitutional law. “I will withhold judgment at this point,” said Cruz.
Alright, folks. Here’s the audio pic.twitter.com/3UhsX3f8Jh
— Haley Byrd (@byrdinator) June 4, 2018
Cruz is no legal featherweight, and his hesitation underscores how murky the legal issue remains. In 1974, at the height of the Watergate scandal, the Justice Department declared that “under the fundamental rule that no one may be a judge in his own case, the President cannot pardon himself.”
Some lawyers, however, have challenged this policy as unconstitutional on its face, arguing that a general principle of the judiciary has no bearing on the constitutional powers of the country’s chief executive. Article II grants to the president “power to grant Reprieves and Pardons for Offenses against the United States, except in Cases of Impeachment.”
Louisiana Republican John Kennedy emphasized the ambiguity of the question. “You can hire a smart lawyer who will tell you yes, and you can hire a bunch of other smart lawyers who will tell you no. Let’s hope we don’t get there,” he told THE WEEKLY STANDARD.
“I know the president has raised it in a tweet, and I get it. The president hasn’t asked me my opinion, but if he did, I would try to convince him that tweeting a little less wouldn’t cause brain damage. But he hasn’t asked my opinion, and he’s the president of the United States, and he likes to tweet, and my guess is he’s going to keep tweeting.”
