As of: February 15, 2024, 12:39 p.m
By: Simon Schröder
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Donald Trump is indicted on 91 counts in four lawsuits.
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Donald Trump still has to answer numerous charges in court.
Whether he could pardon himself if re-elected is legally controversial.
Washington, DC - Donald Trump's numerous pardons shortly before he handed over the White House to President Joe Biden were not in themselves unusual.
However, the fact that he used the pardons primarily for the crimes of his close confidants is a novelty.
During his term in office, the 77-year-old repeatedly advocated for a self-pardon.
A new case highlights the problem with such presidential pardons.
The pardon is one of the most powerful tools available to the incumbent ruler of the USA.
Pardoning allows the president to trump the judicial system, provided one has been convicted under federal law.
Could Donald Trump pardon himself if re-elected?
The question has not yet been conclusively answered and the problem of a normal pardon is also the subject of lively discussion.
Supreme Court could exclude Trump from the US election
Trump's pardons have a catch
The criminal history definitely plays a role in a conviction.
That's how the judges in the Jesse Benton case see it.
Benton was previously convicted in federal court of falsifying documents in the 2012 election and was pardoned by Trump in 2016.
However, there is a catch.
David Levine, a law professor at the University of California, gave his assessment in an exclusive interview on
The DailyBeast
: "It's not like you completely wipe a crime off the books." The pardon
"
is very valuable - as long as you “Don’t get into trouble again.”
The Benton case shows that Trump's pardons have only limited effectiveness
Jesse Benton has been
convicted again in a voter fraud case for accepting donations from a Russian businessman for Trump's presidential bid in 2016, according to reports on
CNN .
His previous crime of document forgery was taken into account, even though Trump pardoned him for it.
Benton appealed.
This Monday (February 12), the appeals court examined the case and responded skeptically to Benton's reasoning,
Bloomberg Law
reported.
A final verdict is still pending.
This fate could also befall other criminals pardoned by Trump.
The question of whether Trump could clear himself of crimes while in office is a more difficult question.
There are largely two opinions among legal experts here.
Can Trump pardon himself as president?
Two constitutional lawyers clarify
An article on
Axios
, a US news website, describes the two perspectives of American constitutional lawyers in the discussion about a president's self-pardon.
Some US constitutional lawyers believe that self-pardons are not explicitly barred by the language of the second article of the Constitution.
This article grants the President the right to pardon.
The only explicitly mentioned exception here is impeachment proceedings.
John Yoo, a law professor at Berkeley, argues that a president does have the power to pardon himself.
On the other hand, constitutional lawyers like Frank Bowman see a clear exclusion of self-pardon in the wording of the constitutional text.
Bowman, a criminal justice lecturer at the University of Missouri, reasons that the words "pardon" and "grant" imply an exchange between two parties.
A self-pardon would therefore be impossible.
Impeachment proceedings could throw a spanner in the works for Trump
Despite these two different perspectives, there is a scholarly consensus on whether a president should pardon himself.
Especially in the current political climate in the USA, a self-pardon by the American president would undermine the rule of law and would call into question the country's democratic institutions.
Additionally, the president could still be removed from office through impeachment.
Trump has already had similar procedures.
(Simon Schröder)