Trump Says He Can Pardon Himself. Nixon Was Told He Couldn't
- ‘The president cannot pardon himself,’ a Nixon lawyer wrote
- Trump says he has an ‘absolute right’ to pardon himself
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President Donald Trump is asserting a power to pardon himself that not even Richard Nixon tried to claim before resigning the presidency in 1974, and that the Justice Department has said isn’t constitutional.
In a legal opinion issued just four days before Nixon stepped down, the Justice Department’s Office of Legal Counsel concluded that a president can’t pardon himself. The opinion was written in response to concerns that he might try to do so.