Opinion | Worrying About the Judge and the Jury for Trump s Trial nytimes.com - get the latest breaking news, showbiz & celebrity photos, sport news & rumours, viral videos and top stories from nytimes.com Daily Mail and Mail on Sunday newspapers.
joined by msnbc legal analyst, jill wine-banks, former watergate prosecutor and professor pearlstein. walk us through the way the pardon works and its limitations in terms of state crimes. so the president s pardon power under the constitution is really substantially unlimited. the president can pardon whoever he wants, as long as he s pardoning them for a federal crime, for conduct that might be illegal under federal law. the president s power under the constitutionextend at all to state crimes. and states have been treated for the last 170 years as separate sovereigns under our law, so that although the supreme court just took a case on this topic, which we can talk about generally double jeopardy concerns don t attach. the state government is a separate sovereign and can move forward on its own, regardless
the use of a legitimate power of the president that is done for corrupt purposes. so that would include firing james comey. it would include firing sally yates. it would include any pardon that he gives. and i think the very fact that his first pardon was to a person who was sheriff joe arpaio, was a message sent to all of the other potential witnesses against him, don t worry, you don t have to cooperate with the court. i will take care of you. and i think that that is also a part of him sending a message, is part of an obstruction, and i think we can infer his intent, his corrupt intent, under the law, by the combination of things that he has done. and i think that that would be a valid and a legitimate case. all right. jill wine-banks and debora pearlstein, thank you both for making time tonight. have a great night. thank you.