And by these presents do grant a full, free, and absolute pardon unto Richard Nixon.

When Gerald Ford pardoned Richard Nixon in August of 1974, almost exactly 50 years ago,

it put a halt to a wave of expected criminal charges against the former president.

Bribery, obstruction of justice, abuse of power, political corruption.

Those were the reasons Nixon faced impeachment resigned, and until the pardon looked like he could go to jail.

Otherwise, no pardon would have been needed.

I've been thinking about that, as frankly I've struggled to wrap my head around the scope of the new Supreme Court decision, Trump v. United States.

It grants President's wide immunity from criminal charges, absolute immunity in some cases.

And I wanted to understand, really understand what it might mean.

I thought a good way to do that would be to go back to our most famous, well-established example of presidential abuse of power and ask,

if this court decision had existed, could Nixon have been charged?

This is a bonus episode of Landslide, applying Trump v. U.S. to Nixon.

Could a criminal case have been brought?

Or would Nixon's conduct have been legal?

Would impeachment even have been possible in that world?

Helping me sort through this is Allison LeCroy, law professor and legal historian at the University of Chicago.

Allison, thanks for joining me.

Thanks. I'm happy to be here.

Before we start, I just feel like I should say that what made me want to have this conversation,

and it's a little different from the other

bonus episodes we've done for this series, was just from reading the court decision, I had this

feeling of, I don't know, awe about what it might mean, but, you know, usual caveats, I'm not a

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