Welcome to Beg to Bue

The Bullworks Weekly Roundtable discussion featuring civil conversation

across the political spectrum.

We range from center left to center right.

I'm Mona Charon, syndicated columnists and policy editor at the Bullwork

and I'm joined by Our regulars, Linda Chavez of the Niskanid Center, Damon Linker, who writes

the sub-stack newsletter, Notes from the Middle Ground, and Bill Galston of the Brookings Institution and the Wall Street Journal. Our special

guest this week is Kim Whaley, law professor, commentator, and author of many books,

the most recent one being the pardon power. We are going to talk first with

Kim Whaley for a few minutes about her book and then we're going to turn

if we're going to have to say goodbye to her and then discuss other matters in the news.

So Kim, thanks so much for being here.

So it was not that long ago that we were all contemplating the possibility of a Trump self-pardon.

And that was a huge concern. It may be less so now because of events but

before we get to whether it is in the offing tell us what you learned in writing this very detailed historical deep dive

into the pardon power. What conclusion did you reach about whether a self-pardon is kosher?

Well, my hypothesis was that the general understanding of the pardon power is absolute and having no restraints seems to be what people just assume that that's wrong. That was my hypothesis that it's wrong and I think I was correct both as a matter of history and as a matter of Supreme Court case law.

The court has already put boundaries around the pardon power.

The course has never said anything about a self pardon because that's never happened in the history of America and like everything under the Constitution, it's not so much what the Constitution allows, but is there any consequences for doing it?

If there's no consequence, then all of a sudden it becomes something that the Constitution

tolerates.

I mean, I conclude in the book that a self pardon should be unconstitutional.

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