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.
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