President without Mercy

Once again, Donald Trump is abusing his power, and pardoning more henchmen. Now the question is, will he go as far as to preemptively absolve himself of any guilt? That would be unprecedented.

Donald Trump left the White House on Wednesday and walked across the South Lawn to a helicopter that would take him to Florida for the Christmas recess. At the last minute, the president turned around and raised his fist in an absurd, revolutionary gesture, as if he wanted to hurl the motto of the last four years once again at Washington, Congress, and his official residence: Me against you.

“Me against you” seems to have broadened in the last four weeks of his presidency to a veritable offensive of obstruction and destruction. No one expected Trump to leave office quietly or submissively. But now the president is exploiting even the smallest loopholes that the law provides him.

Trump’s obstruction of the budget deal is a genuine nuisance that will affect many Americans, cost lives and ruin livelihoods. Four weeks without federal aid, in the middle of a pandemic, could cause significant, long-term damage to the U.S. economy. The 29 pardons that Trump has awarded to date, in contrast, are better targets for outrage over the president’s morality and damnability that has become so common. Whoever wants to experience Trump’s dishonest character, disrepute and shadiness once again just has to look at the list of blokes that the president has obviously taped to his mirror and drafted with himself in mind: Paul Manafort, Roger Stone, the four Blackwater murderers and the father of his son-in-law, Jared Kushner, who has a compromising blackmail video sent to his own sister about her husband. There are no morals for those living in this society.

But, now the main question is this: How far will Trump go with his pardons? He has long departed from the usual practice by which a president relies on pardon recommendations from a lawyer in the Department of Justice, admittedly according to criteria that the president himself establishes.

Trump’s ultimate pardon would be Trump himself. In addition to the many civil suits that have already been lodged against him, a huge wave of lawsuits is expected at the end of his time in office. His political management of the coronavirus pandemic in particular could be a reason to hold the president accountable for negligence. And beyond the politics we could see, it is not improbable that this president was involved in dealings that deserve to be criminally prosecuted: bribery, preferential treatment, unjust enrichment.

Trump can still cause a lot of damage on his way out of the White House. If he does grant himself the ultimate pardon, the Supreme Court will probably rule on it in the end. Such a case would be unprecedented; a president has never pardoned himself, and a lawsuit has never been raised against a past president. For Washington and the U.S., it would clearly be a blessing if Trump did not return to the White House after his excursion to Florida. His raised fist would be an appropriate goodbye.