Quote (Horford @ Aug 24 2018 12:06pm)
Quote (thesnipa @ Aug 24 2018 12:11pm)
he CAN pardon for state crimes, after he names himself emperor, rewrites the constitution on a mcdonalds napkin to also allows execution of snitches that flip, and adds an ammendment that requires to govt to upkeep the wall.
honestly ghot, take a 5th grade civics class or something.
Not often that a double header of idiocy happens.
https://abcnews.go.com/Politics/trump-pardon-manafort-cohen-legal-strategic-error-expert/story?id=57355504\
Quote
The presidential pardon is possible in both cases because the legal proceedings stemmed from federal laws, which fall under the purview of the Constitution’s pardon power granted to the president.
The exact wording in Article II, Section 2 of the Constitution stipulates that the president "shall have Power to grant Reprieves and Pardons for Offences against the United States, except in Cases of Impeachment."
The pardon power "is extremely broad and has effectively four limitations, professor Griffin said.
Pardons only apply to crimes that have already taken place, she noted, therefore cannot be granted as prospective pardons or blank checks for crimes that have yet to be committed. A pardon cannot be applied to the impeachment of any official, including the president or any other high-ranking official, such as a judge, under impeachment.
As for the question of a self-pardon, "there is an extent to which this is still an open question,” professor Griffin said.
"If he is charged with federal offenses, most constitutional analysts have concluded that the president could not pardon himself for the federal offenses he may have committed.”
"A self-pardon almost certainly would not hold up in court so ... it would almost certainly have to come from his successor which, of course, is what occurred in Nixon's case," she said, referencing President Gerald Ford’s September 1974 pardoning of President Richard Nixon in September 1974, almost a month after he resigned.
The final limitation, which appears to be relevant in the Cohen and Manafort cases, is that pardons only apply to federal crimes.
"To date, all of the charges against Cohen and Manafort are federal offenses but that does not preclude state authorities from bringing subsequent charges to the extent the wrongdoing constitutes a crime under state law," Griffin said.
No state charges have been brought in either case but, Griffin noted, but there are a number of laws in some states that effectively match the crimes described in certain federal laws. Therefore, if a state attorney general decided to press any nearly identical state laws, a presidential pardon would not extend to those charges.
