Donald Trump’s new pardon scheme reveals he’s even more desperate than we knew
Pardons aren’t magic wands. And when you start pardoning your own alleged co-conspirators, it becomes even trickier. For instance, if Michael Flynn faces no more criminal jeopardy as a result of his pardon, then he won’t be able to invoke the Fifth Amendment, and Flynn will end up being required to testify in any criminal investigation into Trump.
Trump may be counting on Flynn simply lying to investigators (again), but Trump can’t count on that working across the board. For instance, CNN is now reporting that Trump is considering preemptively pardoning longtime Trump Organization CFO Allen Weisselberg. This would open up a can of worms for Trump.
For starters, the pardon could be thrown out in court, on the grounds that Trump is pardoning Weisselberg specifically to keep him quiet about crimes that they committed together, which would be felony obstruction of justice on Trump’s part. But even if the federal pardon holds up, New York State can still criminally charge Weisselberg, in an attempt at getting him to flip on Trump.
In fact, if Weisselberg accepts a federal pardon, then by legal definition he’ll be admitting his guilt in those crimes. That in turn could make it easier for New York to make state charges stick against Weisselberg, which could end up forcing him to cut a deal against Trump. In other words, this could all go sideways for Trump pretty quickly.
It’s the latest reminder that preemptively pardoning his co-conspirators isn’t necessarily the best idea for Donald Trump to try. It’s just the only thing he has left to try. For every pardon that works out in his favor, there will be one that backfires on him. The fact that Trump is even considering pardoning people like Allen Weisselberg, with all that could go wrong with that, reveals just how desperate Trump is.
