Opinion: The dangers of Trump’s pardoning someone “connected” to his own alleged high crimes in a “suspicious manner” have not abated after the Senate vote.
Speculation that President Donald Trump might pardon Roger Stone has reached a fever pitch after Stone’s sentencing by a federal judge and the president’s repeated hints that he thinks the verdict unfair. But fortunately, the Constitution’s framers imagined this nightmare scenario—a suspected criminal president pardoning a co-conspirator—and they put in the Constitution language to legally prohibit the pardon power in exactly this kind of case.
Defenders of the Constitution knew they needed a robust response to the danger of a president’s abusing the pardon to protect co-conspirators. James Madison, a primary author of the Constitution, argued in reply to Mason that such pardons were barred by the Constitution as already written. He pointed to the protection already in the Constitution: No president could pardon co-conspirators.
Stone was convicted on seven criminal counts centered around allegations that he had lied to Congress during his September 2017 testimony to the House Intelligence Committee as part of the Mueller investigation. The investigation of Stone relates to the charges that the president abused power by soliciting foreign intervention into our election and that he obstructed justice in trying to hide that “high crime and misdemeanor.
The framers deliberately used the phrase “cases of impeachment,” not “conviction.” One reason why is simple: A president convicted by the Senate would be removed from office, and thus unable to pardon anyone. As such, there would be no reason for the Constitution to curb a convicted president’s pardon power. No exception to the pardon power needs to be granted, because no such power exists.
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