National forest to loggers. Got to take care of the floors, you know, the floors of the forest, very important. When all in starts right now. Good evening from new york. Im chris hayes there is a case to be made that there is a loaded gun embedded in the constitution, and that loaded gun is the pardon power. Just sitting there, waiting to be abused. Its a power given solely to the president , and it would theoretically allow for all kinds of misuse. For example, what if a really, really violent genuinely fascist president ordered his chief of staff to murder the head of the Opposition Party on federal property and then pardoned him . What are you going to do . The only constitutional solution is impeachment but if his Party Controls the senate and they stick with him. The pardon power is a way of undoing the entire structure of the rest of the constitution, which is what can make it so dangerous if abused. Weve seen it surface in impeachment proceedings before in the case of richard ni
To open up americas Largest National forest to loggers. Got to take care of the floors, you know, the floors of the forest, very important. When all in starts right now. Good evening from new york. Im chris hayes there is a case to be made that there is a loaded gun embedded in the constitution, and that loaded gun is the pardon power. Just sitting there, waiting to be abused. Its a power given solely to the president , and it would theoretically allow for all kinds of misuse. For example, what if a really, really violent genuinely fascist president ordered his chief of staff to murder the head of the Opposition Party on federal property and then pardoned him . What are you going to do . The only constitutional solution is impeachment but if his Party Controls the senate and they stick with him. The pardon power is a way of undoing the entire structure of the rest of the constitution, which is what can make it so dangerous if abused. Weve seen it surface in impeachment proceedings befo
the most interesting thing watching this as a former federal prosecutor is seeing how easy it is to come by the evidence of it. they don t really go to a lot of trouble to hide it. ian, there is litigation right now, civil litigation about a bunch of aspects of the wall construction, whether it exceeds his authorities with the emergency declaration, suing because of the takings of the land. how do you see the legal recourses and the guardrails and whether they re holding right now? well, those cases are important because one of the things they highlight is that when the president runs roughshod over the law like this, there are real people whose lives are impaired and injured by it. so we protect democracy represent el paso county and the border network for human rights who are suing the president because his fake emergency declaration was not only invalid and unconstitutional, but it s caused real harm to the community in el paso, texas. he essentially wrongly declared
the man who takes an oath to uphold the laws, promises he ll uphold the constitution, which includes a clause that specifically orders him to fulfill his duty to the law. and apparently the law is no more important to him than anything else is. he is willing to order people to violate the law, not to achieve some good gain. not toe achieve some positive goal, but to fulfill a campaign promise that he s made in hopes that he can be reelected in 2020. it s really abominable. ian, how do you see this legally in terms of recourse? well, i would have some advice for federal officials and workers right now who are considering what to do, which is be very careful what orders you follow, because that pardon may not be worth the paper it s written on. let s play this out. if a federal official violates federal law in following a trump order, it s unlikely that the trump administration is going to prosecute them because if the president is willing to pardon them, he is probably willing to in
going to follow us for the rest of our lives probably because you don t know what the next president will do. and he will then point to the ineffective congress that did not take action. we cannot be feckless. we have to be efficacious. congressman al green, thank you very much. thank you. for more on the president s lawless behavior, ian bascom, and joyce vance, former u.s. attorney for the northern district of alabama. she is now an msnbc legal analyst. first, joyce, sort of a high level reaction to the push by the president to sort of by any means necessary build the wall, and explicitly ordering his subordinates to either ignore or actually violate the law. so it s hard to have any reaction to this except for absolute outrage. this is the nation s top executive.