Pardon me while I burst into flames
Donald Trump was never going to be able to magically pardon his way out of this. Even he knows that. It’s why he didn’t bother trying to pardon Michael Flynn and Rick Gates before they cut plea deals and testified against him. Trump even dangled a pardon in Flynn’s face last year, but Flynn knew better than to take the phony bait. Now it’s the moment of truth for some of Trump’s other co-conspirators as well.
Trump is not going to pardon Michael Cohen or Roger Stone, the next two people to get indicted and arrested. He’s already shown that he’s not willing to stick his own neck out to protect the people who were doing the dirty work for him. Most (not all) legal experts believe that pardons would likely be struck down by the Supreme Court anyway, on the grounds that pardoning your own alleged co-conspirators is an illegal act of obstruction of justice.
Even if the pardons were allowed to stand, they would either result in a situation where the defendants would be charged on a state level, or a situation where the defendants would face no criminal jeopardy and would therefore be required to testify against Trump. But Trump is hoping that his henchmen aren’t reading this article or anything similar.
So even as Donald Trump runs around today pardoning deranged Obama critic Dinesh D’Souza, and threatening to pardon Martha Stewart and Rod Blagojevich, it’s all just for show. We saw Trump pardon Joe Arpaio back when Michael Flynn was trying to decide whether to cut a plea deal. Flynn understood that Trump is all about Trump. He decided he was better off agreeing to go to prison for a few years than holding out hope for Trump’s magical pardon scheme. We’ll see if Cohen and Stone are able to approach their own fates as soberly.
