ANN ARBOR, MI - The Rev. Jesse Jackson is calling for President Barack Obama to preemptively pardon Hillary Clinton in case President-elect Donald Trump tries to act on his pledge to have Clinton jailed.

Jackson advocated for the move while speaking at the University of Michigan on Wednesday, Nov. 16, in an event to honor his Civil Rights legacy and discuss how the country will move forward from the historic 2016 presidential election.

"It would be a monumental moral and political mistake to pursue prosecution of Hillary Clinton," Jackson said to the crowd gathered in Rackham Auditorium Wednesday.

Pursing prosecution of Clinton would exacerbate divisions among Americans and damage the government, Jackson said.

In the second presidential debate on Oct. 9, Trump said if he was elected President he would have the Attorney General appoint a special prosecutor to investigate Clinton's use of a private email server. The scandal around Clinton's emails stemmed from her use of a private email account when conducting government business as Secretary of State.

The FBI completed a full investigation of Clinton's email use while she was Secretary of State and did not recommend any charges against her as a result of their findings in July. Eleven days before the election, FBI director James Comey told Congress the FBI was investigating new material related to the case, and on Nov. 6, Comey said they had not found any new information to contradict the FBI's previous findings.

In a "60 Minutes" interview on Nov. 11, Trump said he would "think about" appointing a special prosecutor to investigate Clinton.

Jackson urged Obama to follow the example set by past Presidents Abraham Lincoln and Gerald Ford in offering pardons to "bind and heal wounds" in the country, he said. Lincoln pardoned Confederate soldiers, and Ford pardoned Richard Nixon for his involvement in the Watergate scandal, although Nixon had not been indicted at the time of the pardon.