>> david swerdlick, there was a lot of talk about the president pardoning people ahead of any indictment. could he still do that? >> yeah, he can do that. i mean, the president has broad pardon powers at least when it comes to federal crimes, but, you know, that would probably present at least somewhat of a political problem for him if he started pardoning people in advance of them either being charged or going on trial, et cetera. i mean, you have a situation where it's one thing that to say someone was convicted and then pardoned them after the fact, that's the scenario we're more familiar with. to start say ing in advance, i' blanket pardoning this person and robert mueller's special counsel team hasn't figured out what they did or did not do, then you have a situation where members of congress, we in the media have to start looking at that and saying, well, what is the pardon about? is it trying to hide something? is the president just, you know, trying to do a favor for his