Maybe a stupid question, but: How broad are the presidential pardon powers?
Could he pre-emptively pardon anyone who will kill person X?
Could he blanket-pardon all cops convicted of a crime while on duty?
Could he pardon himself for all crimes past, present and future?
But the meaning of “preemptive” is more like a “Just in case”, rather than, “immune from future offences”.
They were all pardoned from 2014 until now, but trump admin could theoretically invent a new case that allegedly happened on Jan 21 and make an investigstion out of it. (It probably wouldn’t go very far tho, I mean considering that even an indictment requires a majority of a grand jury to indict)
seems like preemptive ones and reflexive ones havent been tested but we are probably about to find out what happens when the prez, congress, and judiciary are all politically aligned and wanna do evil.
Maybe a stupid question, but: How broad are the presidential pardon powers?
Could he pre-emptively pardon anyone who will kill person X?
Could he blanket-pardon all cops convicted of a crime while on duty?
Could he pardon himself for all crimes past, present and future?
Extremely broad, for federal crimes. None of your examples have been tested yet.
Expect them to be.
Pardons cannot apply to the future*
*Unless you start seeing John Roberts doing a nazi salute, then you should get ready, because you’re about to be in a camp
remind me 2 years
Quite the optimism on how long it will take when the guy who bought a new department was throwing nazi salutes during the inauguration.
didn’t Biden just preemptively pardon his family?
He did.
But the meaning of “preemptive” is more like a “Just in case”, rather than, “immune from future offences”.
They were all pardoned from 2014 until now, but trump admin could theoretically invent a new case that allegedly happened on Jan 21 and make an investigstion out of it. (It probably wouldn’t go very far tho, I mean considering that even an indictment requires a majority of a grand jury to indict)
seems like preemptive ones and reflexive ones havent been tested but we are probably about to find out what happens when the prez, congress, and judiciary are all politically aligned and wanna do evil.
Others basically covered it, but just to be concise:
Pardons only apply to federal crimes, not state laws/crimes. For federal crimes, they’re extremely broad.
Pre-pardons are not a thing, but the president could pardon someone after the commission of the crime and before their arrest. So, almost.
The president almost certainly can pardon themselves for any federal crimes but not preemptively. It could probably be a full on blanket pardon.