The Case Against the Democratic House Impeaching Trump by Alan Dershowitz

Author:Alan Dershowitz
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Hot Books
Published: 2018-12-13T16:00:00+00:00

Trump Will Not Pardon Himself or Testify in Sex Cases33

From an interview by Chuck Todd on Meet the Press, June 5, 2018.

CHUCK TODD: Welcome back. On this question of whether the president—on the president pardoning himself, as you heard Giuliani say right there, politically, it could be a nonstarter. But what about legally? That question hasn’t really been asked before, and many legal scholars say we don’t know what that answer would be.

So we’re going to continue our constitutional law class right here. Joining me now is one such legal scholar and a frequent defender of President Trump’s current legal predicament. It’s Alan Dershowitz.

He is a Professor Emeritus at Harvard Law School, author of the upcoming book, The Case Against Impeaching Trump.

Professor Dershowitz, if any day we need to make sure to use the professor title, it is on a day like this. Thank you for coming on, sir.

DERSHOWITZ: Well, thank you.

TODD: Let me start—

DERSHOWITZ: Sure.

TODD: Let me start with this, you wrote that we don’t know whether or not the president can pardon himself.

DERSHOWITZ: That’s right.

TODD: In a tweet storm last night, Senator Ted Cruz did cite a 1974 Justice Department memo that made a finding that said it wasn’t true.

And it wrote, in part, in this—and I’m curious of your take on it. This is from August 5, 1974. Presidential or legislative pardon of the president under the fundamental rule that no one may be a judge in his own case, the president cannot pardon himself.

I do note the date, August 5, 1974, three days before Richard Nixon would resign the presidency. What do you make of that finding? A finding is not a ruling—a Supreme Court ruling. That, I understand, but what do you make of that rationale?

DERSHOWITZ: It’s a logical argument against self-pardoning. Madison made the same point during the constitutional debates. On the other hand, the constitutional text itself says a president may issue pardons in any case, except in cases of impeachment. That suggests one of two things.

Either the president can pardon himself or, more likely, that the Framers contemplated that a president couldn’t be prosecuted. And if he couldn’t be prosecuted, there would be no need to pardon himself. He certainly couldn’t be prosecuted while he was president.

Of course, Richard Nixon was pardoned when he left office. At the time he left office. So it would be [a] great law school exam question because no one knows the answer. And I have to tell you, anybody who tells you definitively—

TODD: Sure.

DERSHOWITZ: —that either it can be done or can’t be done is pulling your leg. Nobody knows the answer to the question.

TODD: Well, right, you have to have—we’d have to have an instance for it to be tested into the courts, and I think we’re all hoping we don’t ever get to a situation like this.

DERSHOWITZ: It won’t.

TODD: But do you—

DERSHOWITZ: It won’t ever happen, yes.

TODD: Do you think it’s so unclear that it’s something that should be dealt with in the Constitution

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