The real reason Donald Trump can’t magically pardon Donald Trump Jr
Now that Donald Trump has publicly confessed to Donald Trump Jr’s criminal plot with the Russians, we’re all left trying to figure out what – if any – backdoor strategy Trump might be attempting here. Is Trump putting this out there in the hope of normalizing it before Robert Mueller indicts and arrests Junior for it? We don’t yet know. In any case, I keep getting asked if Trump doing this to try to set up his son for a pardon. If that is Trump’s play here, it’s not going to work.
If Donald Trump tried to pardon Donald Trump Jr, there are four separate ways it would go wrong. First, most (not all) legal experts think the courts would strike down such a pardon for being an illegal act of obstruction of justice. Second, even if the federal pardon did hold up in court, Junior would then be hit with state level charges in New York, which Trump can’t pardon. But that’s just the start.
Third, if those state charges somehow fell by the wayside, Junior would no longer be facing any legal jeopardy, meaning he would be required to testify against Donald Trump. The Fifth Amendment only protects people from testifying against themselves, not from testifying against their father. If Junior refused to testify, he could then be arrested for it, and Trump would have to try to pardon him for that as well, which would then newly eliminate his criminal jeopardy, meaning he could be arrested again for refusing to testify. It’s the kind of Doctor Strange feedback loop that wouldn’t get Junior off the hook. But then there’s the fourth problem.
We’ve seen the Republicans in Congress try to stand by Donald Trump as much as they can, for partisan reasons. But we’ve seen GOP leaders refuse to allow to Trump to fire Jeff Sessions, or impeach Rod Rosenstein. It proves there’s a limit at which they start to worry more about protecting themselves than about protecting him. If Trump were to pardon his son, it would finish him politically, and it could finally push GOP leaders to throw him under the bus. Even if not, the such a pardon still wouldn’t save Trump Jr, making it a huge risk for no gain. If Trump tries it, he’ll regret it.
