Settling the fierce academic debate over whether or not a president can pardon himself would probably require a president to pardon himself for certain federal crimes and then, presumably after his term, challenge efforts to try him for those crimes, his self-pardon notwithstanding. The mere fact that the current president is putting the question to his lawyers, though, speaks volumes not just about his culpability, but about where his priorities lie.

The pardon power stems from the Constitution’s stipulation that the president “shall have Power to grant Reprieves and Pardons for Offenses against the United States, except in Cases of Impeachment.” While the legal question would turn on whether a “grant” can be directed inward or only outward, the act itself would concede to the commission of “offenses against the United States.” By pardoning himself, Trump wouldn’t be inoculating himself against political jeopardy, only attempting to keep himself out of prison.

A president who claimed to be a tribune for law and order is mulling ways to immunize himself from prosecution for crimes, while showing no comparable mercy to anyone outside his immediate family or circle of conspirators. The Justice Department’s investigation of Russian influence in the 2016 election—and of the Trump campaign’s assistance in those efforts—is exposing as a sham Trump’s claim to loyalty to anyone other than himself.

Trump’s famously ghoulish campaign trail boast that he “could stand in the middle of 5th Avenue and shoot somebody and [not] lose any voters” was a slight exaggeration, but it spoke to something true and profound. The GOP base’s indifference to Russian election interference, and to Trump’s complicity with it, shows the strength of the bond Trump forged with a certain segment of the electorate through his unconventionally nasty and dishonest style on the stump.



The point of Trump’s boast was that his support isn’t rooted in integrity or ethics or law but in mutual reciprocity. His loyalists will look past any number of ideological and ethical and even legal transgressions because they believe he is fighting to secure more important things, and that his survival will portend their revival. But Trump’s conduct in office, and in his efforts to obstruct the Russia investigation, give the lie to the implicit promise of his campaign.