Instead of continually posing the question Whom will he pardon next? — we just might want to start thinking about the responses to the question: Who could pardon Donald Trump?
Because he has once again taken actions that many are calling potentially criminal. We’re speaking, of course, of his Saturday phone call to the secretary of state of Georgia, Brad Raffensperger. Trump spent an hour doing nearly all the talking, wheedling, and occasional shouting, in a drive to convince Raffensberger to “find” enough votes cast in the recent presidential election that could overturn the results in that state.
It was not clear precisely how Trump expected him to change the outcome of the state’s election results, since the vote been repeatedly recounted, audited, and finally certified by the state. In state law, this cajoling and demanding phone call to affect the outcome of an election could be classified as a criminal act. If he were charged at some point by the state of Georgia, Trump would be unable to dodge facing the charges, since — if it were possible for him to pardon himself, this would apply only to federal crimes — he cannot use his power of the pardon.
And this is one of a long list of legal troubles Trump is due to confront once his term expires on Jan. 20th. Many of his legal issues are from the state of New York; the governor there would be the only individual who could pardon him. And he’s unlikely to, to put it mildly.
Trump needs a friend. It would have to be a governor, or a president. Since Joe Biden’s out of the question, might Mike Pence do this task? He could be sworn in right before the end of Trump’s term, with the understanding that he was to grant Trump a big blanket pardon for any and all past crimes during a period to be determined.
This period of time would have to encompass the presidency, the transition during which his campaign got up to all sorts of actions with Russians, the times that Trump paid alleged pre-election hush money to Stormy Daniels and Karen McDougal, and then the years Michael Cohen indicated that Trump had inflated and deflated values of his assets for tax benefits.
The alleged sexual assaults of E. Jean Carroll and others are probably long past any statute of limitations, so he needs no pardon for these events. The matter of a 13-year-old’s alleged rape at Jeffrey Epstein’s mansion now exists only as a dropped lawsuit and Trump’s denial.
Soon, the newly-passed Defense Funding act (that Trump vetoed but Congress overrode his veto), will be in effect. One of its powers is that it forces U.S. shell companies to reveal their owners. This is why many believed Trump vetoed the bill in the first place. The hoped-for effect of the bill is to make money laundering harder, and provide more transparency in business. We can only speculate at what troubles this bill might cause Trump in coming months, and what pardon help he might be lacking.
