St. Louis Public Radio
Protesters gathered in front of the Old Courthouse in downtown St. Louis Saturday afternoon urging Sen. Josh Hawley to resign.
Hundreds rallied in downtown St. Louis Saturday to demand the resignation of U.S. Sen. Josh Hawley.
The Missouri Republican was the first senator to announce he would publicly object to President-elect Joe Biden’s win. Hawley faced strong criticism this week after he was photographed raising his fist in support of a pro-Trump mob, shortly before they burst into the Capitol on Wednesday.
Under gray skies, a crowd of masked protesters gathered in front of the Old Courthouse Saturday afternoon, waving handmade signs that read “Resign Hawley” and “The blood’s on your hands.”
A nonbinding 1974 opinion from the Justice Department’s Office of Legal Counsel, issued just days before President Nixon resigned, says it “would seem” a president cannot pardon himself. Yet that opinion is less than a paragraph and carries no real legal force.
Legal analysts say a self-pardon would run afoul of the Constitution, citing the Founding Fathers’ efforts to limit presidential pardon powers.
The Constitution’s pardon provisions are extremely broad, but there are other places in the document to glean the framers’ thinking.
One place is the provision on impeachment and removal, which states that a president can be charged with a crime after he leaves office.