Donald Trump certainly will try this out if feels he wants to….
One should remember….
A ‘pardon’ implies guilt of a crime…..
Below is a piece that goes over one ex-federal judge’s argument against a President being able to pardon himself….
The president was correct that some scholars have reached that conclusion. But those scholars are wrong. The president has no right under the Constitution to pardon himself.
Article II, Section 2, Clause 1 of the Constitution provides that the president “shall have Power to grant Reprieves and Pardons for Offenses against the United States, except in Cases of Impeachment.”
There is next to nothing from the constitutional convention, state ratification debates or 229 years of Supreme Court decisions that sheds light on whether this language empowers a president to pardon himself for federal crimes.
An acting assistant attorney general for the Justice Department’s Office of Legal Counsel tentatively said in August 1974, four days before President Richard M. Nixon resigned, that there is no power to self-pardon. This opinion, a single conclusory sentence, can hardly be regarded as authority on the subject.
The argument often made for the presidential self-pardon is that the authority is absolute, and that the pardon clause does not expressly prevent self-pardons. The argument often made against self-pardons is that they would be inconsistent with the president’s responsibility in Article II, Section 3 to “take Care that the Laws be faithfully executed.”….
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So why is it clear that the president lacks the power to pardon himself? There are three reasons….