Kimberly Wehle is an expert in constitutional law and the separation of powers, with particular emphasis on...
J. Craig Williams is admitted to practice law in Iowa, California, Massachusetts, and Washington. Before attending law...
Published: | January 17, 2025 |
Podcast: | Lawyer 2 Lawyer |
Category: | News & Current Events |
Four years ago, on January 6th, 2021, our U.S. Capitol was under siege by supporters of Donald Trump who tried to stop a joint session of Congress from certifying the electoral votes of the 2020 presidential election. Fast forward to 2025, Donald J. Trump is about to take office as President and the fate of those convicted of January 6th crimes lies in his hands.
In this episode, Craig is joined by Kimberly Wehle, professor of law at the University of Baltimore School of Law and author of the book, Pardon Power: How the Pardon System Works—and Why. Craig & Kim take a look back at January 6th, the possibility of Trump pardoning those convicted of federal crimes stemming from January 6th, and the implications this could have on our society and our legal system.
Pardon Power: How the Pardon System Works—and Why by Kimberly Wehle
Kimberly Wehle:
Law, as you know, is all about creating incentives and disincentives. We have rules and we have consequences for rules because we want to disincentivize behavior that we don’t like. I mean, if you’re a parent, you know this, you’ve got to enforce the rule that there’s no eating in the living room. If you don’t enforce it, the rule goes out the window. And now after that opinion, there’s really no incentive for presidents not to commit crimes except some kind of internal compass.
Announcer:
Welcome to the award-winning podcast, Lawyer 2 Lawyer with J. Craig Williams, bringing you the latest legal news and observations with the leading experts in the legal profession. You are listening to Legal Talk Network.
J. Craig Williams:
Welcome to Lawyer 2 Lawyer on the Legal Talk Network. I’m Craig Williams, coming to you from Southern California. I write a blog named May It Please the court and have three books out titled How To Get Sued the Sled and My newest book. How would You Decide 10 famous Trials That Changed History? You can find all three on Amazon. In addition, our new podcast miniseries in Dispute, 10 famous trials that changed history is currently featured here on the Legal Talk Network and on your favorite podcasting app. And just a note, on January 21st, 2025, we will be releasing the latest episode spotlighting the controversial McMartin Preschool trial. You won’t want to miss it. Four years ago on January 6th, 2021, our US Capitol was under siege by supporters of Donald Trump who tried to stop a joint session of Congress from certifying the electoral votes of the 2020 presidential election.
Fast forward to 2025, Donald J. Trump is about to take office as the president and the fate of those convicted January 6th crimes lies in his hands. According to the Los Angeles Times, more than 1500 people from across the United States have been charged with federal crimes related to the Deadly riot, and currently there are hundreds of capital riot prosecutions in limbo. As DC courts awake Trump’s White House return. From the beginning, Trump has spoken of how he would pardon these individuals and how he will be acting very quickly to save these folks from a very nasty system today on Lawyer 2 Lawyer. We’ll take a look back at January 6th, the possibility of Trump pardoning those convicted of federal crime stemming from January 6th and the implications this could have on our society and our legal system if released. And to help us better understand today’s topic, we’re joined by a returning guest, Kimberly Wehle.
She’s an expert in constitutional law and the separation of powers with particular emphasis on presidential power and administrative agencies. Kim is a tenured law professor at the University of Baltimore School of Law where she teaches constitutional law, civil procedure, administrative law, and federal courts. She’s also a legal contributor for ABC News and regularly writes for Politico, the Atlantic and the Bulwark. She was the assistant United States attorney in the Washington DC office and associate independent counsel in the Whitewater investigation. Kim also has a new book out titled Pardon Power, how the Pardon System Works. And Why By Whittle Press welcome back to the show, Kim.
Kimberly Wehle:
Great to be here, Craig.
J. Craig Williams:
Well, Kim, you’ve got quite a resume. Tell us how you became interested in constitutional law.
Kimberly Wehle:
Gosh, I think that really started when I was in the government, as you indicated, when I was a very young lawyer, I worked for the Star investigation into alleged wrongdoing or perceived wrongdoing by former President Bill Clinton. And then when I transitioned into teaching, it was just a natural progression to be talking to students about the structure of our government having lived through firsthand what it was like to have the presidency itself challenged and then the courses have just piled up over the years. It’s, to me, endlessly fascinating. And frankly, with the first Trump administration, we had so many novel questions and they continue, Craig, the Constitution really wasn’t built for 2025.
J. Craig Williams:
No, it wasn’t. And we sure have a lot of constitutional presidential challenge issues. Let’s pick on one. Let’s talk about the origin and the history of the pardon. Where did it all begin?
Kimberly Wehle:
The pardon goes back to the code of Hammurabi, this ancient Babylonian text, and it’s of course famously in the New Testament of the Bible, Jesus of Nazareth was crucified because TIUs Pilate denied him a pardon. There was a tradition for the people to decide on Passover, one person who would get pardoned for some kind of criminal sentence or conviction, and it was between a murderer by the name of Baras and Jesus and they chose Baras. And of course the rest is history. It made its way into the US Constitution because there was a pardon power that was associated with the kings in England, but that really, Craig came from a system that really didn’t exist for criminal defendants. It was a lot of meeting out justice amongst warring private parties. And the king would come in and say, listen, any offense against one of my subjects is an offense against me, so I need to be here to, and to basically exercise mercy when the death penalty, for example, is just not fitting the crime.
The framers of the Constitution had that backdrop. There was some debate about constraining the president’s pardon and power because of course we’re not an unlimited monarchy where the power of the President comes from God as it was in common law. England, we are about the power of the people, and that’s really foundationally about accountability for anyone who’s holding power. But ultimately James Madison and Alexander Hamilton, based on their writings sort of won the day in creating a constitutional provision in Article two, which gives the presidents all their powers that says that the presidential have the power to grant reprieves pardons. Except in the case of impeachment, as recently as this summer when the Supreme Court created criminal immunity for presidents, the court really underscored, or I think really put a halo around the pardon power is somehow above the rest of the president’s powers. There’s almost no limits on the pardon power anymore. I argue in the book that just like every other presidential power, including the commander-in-chief power, there should be restraints that are logical and ensure that there’s not the kinds of abuses that the framers are really worried about carrying over from King George iii,
J. Craig Williams:
At least some checks and balances like the rest of our system,
Kimberly Wehle:
Right? I mean, there’s not another power that the president really can exercise with impunity. And in the book I talk about the cases going back frankly to the Civil War, the Supreme Court cases, and there are restraints on the pardon power. It’s just very hard to get these cases before the Supreme Court, but the court is held, for example, that you cannot pardon as a president, crimes that have not occurred yet. You can’t pardon future offenses where the crime hasn’t even been committed. The Supreme Court is held that a president cannot reimburse someone for a criminal penalty if part of their criminal sentence was they had to pay a fine. The President can’t reimburse that as part of the pardon because that would impinge on the powers of the United States Congress. So it seems to me there are other logical restraints on the part and power just like all the other checks and balances in the Constitution. But I really can’t overstate how radical that Trump versus United States opinion was this summer where the Supreme Court really did put the President Above the Law when it comes to committing crimes using the powers of the office. So we’re really in a different world. We’re in a post-Trump versus us versus pre-Trump versus US Constitutional order, and we’ll just have to see how it shakes out, including the use of the pardon power
J. Craig Williams:
Can Trump pardon himself.
Kimberly Wehle:
I argue in the book that that would undermine the idea that no one’s Above the Law that it would undermine the separation of powers because a pardon really just wipes out the work of the judicial branch, the juries. It wipes out Congress’s work in deciding what’s a crime. But I think again, Trump versus us change that because if a president can’t commit a federal crime in office, there’s nothing to pardon them for. So I think the question of a self pardon is kind of for the dust bins of history thanks to the Supreme Court majority.
J. Craig Williams:
That’s kind of frightening.
Kimberly Wehle:
It is. It is. I don’t relish in taking this position, but law as you know, is all about creating incentives and disincentives. We have rules and we have consequences for rules because we want to disincentivize behavior that we don’t like. I mean, if you’re a parent this, you’ve got to enforce the rule that there’s no eating in the living room. If you don’t enforce it, the rule goes out the window. And now after that opinion, there’s really no incentive for presidents not to commit crimes except some kind of internal compass. And that’s certainly not the design of the Constitution and why the Revolutionary War was fought.
J. Craig Williams:
Do you think the Supreme Court actually anticipated that far down the line, or was this a shortsighted decision?
Kimberly Wehle:
Well, the dissenting justices, justice Sotomayor laid this out pretty clearly, and Chief Justice Roberts, in his majority opinion, responded to it some hyperbole. Essentially. They really seemed to take the position that the real menace to our constitutional order were prosecutors, overreaching, prosecutors, and obviously this whole thing would not have existed, but for January 6th, 2021, we would not have criminal immunity for presidents. If that didn’t happen,
J. Craig Williams:
Are we going to see January six pardons?
Kimberly Wehle:
That’s a big question. Donald Trump has dangled them. He actually ran on that as part of his platform, Donald Trump, and I don’t think I’m the only one who sees the truth in this. It doesn’t always keep his word. I think it’ll depend if it’s politically expedient, I think it’s highly unlikely there’ll be a blanket pardon for all of them. And he sort of indicated that there wouldn’t be, but my sense is it is probably more likely to be based on loyalty. Who gets a pardon in for January 6th? That is have you adhered to the notion that that was a day of love and that their hostages, rather than some of these defendants have sort of changed, had a change of heart and said, listen, I shouldn’t have done it. A number of them testified in the January 6th committee hearings. I think it’s more likely to be about loyalty than it’s about mercy, which back to your original question, why do we have the pardon power? Why has it been stood the test of time? It’s about showing mercy for an unfair criminal justice system, and if anyone just turns on the videos of January 6th, 2021, your eyes can tell you the truth about whether that was a violent day or a peaceful day.
J. Craig Williams:
So what are the prosecutors doing now? I mean, we have a special prosecutor, certainly not Ken Starr, but Jack Smith out there saying, well, I want to release this report, and Eileen Cannon has shut him down. Are we ever going to find the truth about what happened?
Kimberly Wehle:
Eileen Cannon, I have a column out today in the Bulwark. She didn’t have really the legal authority to do what she did. That case was dismissed by her, I think on silly grounds that the special counsel’s unconstitutional. I mean if that’s the case, all of them are unconstitutional, including the one that investigated Hunter Biden. And the whole case is on appeal, meaning the power of the case. The jurisdiction over the case has gone to the 11th circuit. But Craig, this is all about running out the clock. January 20th, the inauguration is around the corner, and Donald Trump in that moment will be in charge of the Justice Department and in charge of that opinion of that report, Jack Smith’s team filed a new brief today in the 11th circuit asking to at least release the part dealing with the DC case, the case involving January 6th over which Eileen Cannon never had any jurisdiction.
Her case was DeMar Lago case. Her order covers both of them. So it really was an overreach on her part, but she’s been pretty blatantly political from the beginning. Really hasn’t exercised her judgment in a way that’s traditional for federal judges, which is about calling balls and strikes, not making kind of political decisions. So the 11th Circuit could step in, but then presumably if the 11th Circuit backs up Jack Smith, who’s really adhering to the law, which gives Merrick Garland the authority to decide whether to make this public or not a judge, that decision could be appealed to the Supreme Court. And there’s just really no time between now and the 20th, I think for the court to make a decision on that. If they decide to take that case, I think we might never see the report.
J. Craig Williams:
Right. Well, Kim, at this time, we’re going to take a quick break to hear a word from our sponsors. We’ll be right back and welcome back to Lawyer 2 Lawyer. I’m joined by Kim Waley. She’s the professor of law at University of Baltimore School of Law and author of the book, pardon Power, how the Pardon System Works and Why? Well, let’s talk a little bit about why the Pardon system works the way it does. I mean, why isn’t there any kind of checks and balances here? I mean, we had framers certainly who understood checks and balances. Why did they give such unlimited power to the President?
Kimberly Wehle:
Because I think the notion was that the criminal justice system sometimes can be really harsh. I mean, I write in the book about a story from common law England, 13th or 14th century, a little girl, 4-year-old who mistakenly opened a door and pushed another child into water and the child drowned and the father had to secure a pardon from the king because otherwise that child was going to get extremely harsh punishment in a very rough system. That’s the theory behind it. And I do think we forget at the time of the framing of the Constitution, it was a very small country. There wasn’t a criminal justice system in place really at the federal level. There was no fourth, fifth, sixth amendments that came later. The protections for criminal defendants and the framers sort of knew everyone who could be president, right? They were all white males that had some money and their jobs, Supreme Court Justice one day Secretary of State yesterday type thing, that was Chief Justice Marshall, first Chief Justice of the Supreme Court.
So I think the expectation was we trust who’s ever going to be in the presidency to use this power with integrity, and there is a Department of Justice of Division, the office of the Pardon attorney that receives applications for federal pardons and makes recommendations to the President. They get a couple thousand two to 3000 a year on average, something like that. But it ultimately, because of the language of the Constitution saying the presidential have the power to grant reprieves and pardons, those recommendations by the Justice Department are not binding on the President. So it really is one of those things that if there’s not pushback by the media, by the American public, by voters, then it can be used corruptly. And I’ll just go back again to Bill Clinton. He pardoned a guy that had been convicted of tax evasion and went to Switzerland, Mark Rich, and he had financial ties to Clinton interests and Bill Clinton pardoned him. But there was a congressional investigation into that. Pardon? There was a DOJ investigation into that. Pardon? Neither of them produced any accountability for it, but we’ve really come a long way since the Clinton era when we’re now in this moment where there’s a widespread assumption that there’s no limits. So I guess my answer to your question is we’ve expanded the pardon power over the years, not narrowed it beyond I think the framer’s original intent.
J. Craig Williams:
Well, and in the framer’s time, there wasn’t even a popular vote. So it’s completely different these days.
Kimberly Wehle:
So much of it is different. There wasn’t a two party system. There weren’t even really corporations and the way we know them now. Right. Famously, the Supreme Court held that corporations, even though they’re legal fictions, you can make ’em with a click on the mouse of your computer. They don’t actually even exist as a piece of paper or certainly not a brick and mortar building or anything. Corporations have first amendment rights the right to speak. And that has led to many experts believe a flood of money in politics where special interest corporations dark money that can’t even be traced to a source is what’s really motivating how our politicians operate, not the will of the people. So, so much has changed, and the framers made it very difficult to actually amend the Constitution. It’s difficult to get it to be flexible.
J. Craig Williams:
Well, of course I’ve done a pretty good job of it.
Kimberly Wehle:
That’s true. That is, and that’s where, in a way, maybe they made it too difficult because to get criminal immunity for presidents, for example, you’d have to have super majorities in both houses of Congress and in state legislatures for voters to do it. But do you have five justices in that case? Six justices with life tenure and they with a stroke of a pen, can literally take out their black Sharpie and change the terms of the constitution and the structure of government itself.
J. Craig Williams:
Right. Let’s talk about Biden’s pardons for a little bit. I mean, is hunter’s pardon any different than Biden pardoning himself?
Kimberly Wehle:
Oh, I think so. Very much so. It’s not the first time there’s been a family member pardoned by a president. Bill Clinton pardoned his brother, Donald Trump pardoned his son-in-law’s father and who’s now been tapped to be Ambassador of France, and Chris Christie, former New Jersey governor, and he was also US attorney for New Jersey oversaw that case said it was one of the most despicable, and I’m paraphrasing prosecutions he’s ever been part of the family member Link is not new with Joe Biden. Hunter Biden’s not a violent person. I don’t think anyone’s worried about that. I think that would be a cause of concern and has been one of Donald Trump’s pardons went on to be arrested for domestic violence this summer, and he’s probably not the only one. Of course, there are thousands of pardons done at the state level.
J. Craig Williams:
Well, we have death row pardons. I mean, we have people that were on death row that are pardoned basically based on religious beliefs that Biden held.
Kimberly Wehle:
Well, I mean, and they’re still in jail. So I think that’s different from than maybe the January 6th insurrectionist pardoning people who will feel emboldened to commit potentially violent crimes. I mean, I’m just saying that to me is a line, and you could make the argument, and I’ve made the argument that the hunter Biden pardon would qualify for mercy. I mean, look at his Delaware conviction. It was for checking a box in which he wasn’t honest about his drug habit that he had slipped back into after the death of his brother Bo, and he owned this gun for 11 days. Lindsey Graham, Senator Lindsey Graham even said, that’s not a crime that would’ve been prosecuted, but for who he was. But I think the key big issue really is Donald Trump, in my view, getting elected and promising for months to use the Justice Department and the FBI to go after political perceived political enemies.
We’ve never seen that Craig in American history. It’s extremely terrifying, frankly, particularly given that the Supreme Court has essentially said that if Donald Trump does that or any president does that and commits crimes in that regard, that there’s nothing that can be done. There’s no accountability for that. And I think Joe Biden probably knew his son would have a big bullseye on his back by virtue of who he was. So I really don’t see that as a corrupt, pardon? It wasn’t to cover up Joe Biden’s crimes. It wasn’t for Joe Biden could get a lot of money once he left office. I mean, we’ve seen those kinds of pardons over the years and there’s barely been a shrug. No one’s really even noticed this stuff until Joe Biden stepped up. I think the good news is people are finally paying attention to the massive power of the pardon and how corrupt it can be.
J. Craig Williams:
Let’s talk about your book, pardon Power, how the Pardon System Works and Why. What was your inspiration for that book?
Kimberly Wehle:
I’ve written, this is my fourth book in a series, my and Why series. They’re not the how to books, they’re the why to books. I started with How to Read the Constitution and why, what do you need to know about voting and why? How to think like a lawyer and why, and now Pardon Power, how the Pardon system works and why? Because it’s really kind of at the center of this question of are we a democracy? What is a democracy? Can you have a democracy where all the power with this kind of massive power is concentrated in one person? And I conclude in the book, the answer is no. That maybe that’s a flaw in the framers design, or at least how it’s been interpreted. But it’s really an interesting concept too, because it also, you mentioned religion or religious beliefs around death row pardons, but there’s a whole history and common law, England of the church being able to, pardon Lady Godiva, this idea of a Vestal virgin. If you were on your way to the gallows and locked eyes with a Vestal virgin, the idea was the divine meant for you to be pardoned. So the pardon holds with it. Corruption and mercy, again, dates back to the Bible. It’s really at the center of some of these deep, deep debates we’re having right now in politics, but they go to core values in our humanity as a society, frankly.
J. Craig Williams:
It really does. I mean, we are right now a nation divided and do you think that pardons or any aspect of mercy is going to solve any of these problems?
Kimberly Wehle:
I really don’t. I wrote a column for Politico in February of 2022 that was a follow up to a thought experiment I did with my constitutional law students where I said, okay, let’s go make a long list. And it was 25, 27, something like that. The checks on the presidency. Again, what is the incentive to make someone not speed, right? It’s not the speed limit. We all will go 50 and a 35. It’s the little machine in the bushes, right, that sends you the ticket, which I actually got one last week for a hundred bucks, and nobody wants that. You slow down on that road again. What are the tickets for speeding through the White House? And the only one we could figure out in 2022 was the threat of a prosecution of a president, and now that’s gone. So there isn’t a need, even for a pardon. I mean, we really have so much concentration of unlimited power in what could be the most powerful person in the planet and in Donald Trump personally, the most powerful person who’s ever lived, given the role of the United States across the globe. So it’s buckle your seatbelt. We’ll just have to see how this shakes out for the nation and for the globe.
J. Craig Williams:
I mean, does that give Trump then the power to impose martial law, to suspend elections, to declare himself dictator for life?
Kimberly Wehle:
Well, let’s take that one at a time. I mean, martial law deals with the Insurrection Act. I do think given the Supreme Court’s opinion that says if a president uses their official power, then it’s Above the Law. So if you direct Seal Team six to shoot someone, it’s constitutional. If you pull out your personal handgun and shoot someone, you could be prosecuted. It’s the Seal Team six that we should worry about. That’s the one we should worry about. Could he suspend elections? Elections generally are governed by the states under the Constitution. That would be difficult, but he could stop the certification that happened on Monday if a future election were to before an opponent, like what happened in 2020? He has the control over the military and could take steps potentially to stop that. He also has this pro prosecutorial power where he could threaten and intimidate members of Congress.
He could threaten and intimidate people within the electoral system at the state level to not cross him because there could be consequences as far as the third term, since he took office, people have been debating this 22nd amendment. I encourage folks to just pull that one up. The first line of it makes it really clear. You get two terms as president. There’s some clarifying language afterwards. That is now lawyers are being used to do some gymnastics to make an argument that there’s more than two terms. But that was enacted because Roosevelt, the idea was had too power for too long. But again, if someone were to run for a third term and no one was going to give them the ticket for speeding, then the answer is, yeah, we’ll just throw the 22nd amendment out. So crucial for people to understand. It’s not what the Constitution says. It’s whether the Constitution is enforceable. If it’s not enforceable and not enforced, it really doesn’t matter what it says. And that’s what I’ve been working on for now eight or nine years, and we’ve just seen one guardrail fall after another.
J. Craig Williams:
Kim, we’re going to take another quick break to hear a word from our sponsors. We’ll be right back and welcome back to Lawyer 2 Lawyer. I’m back with Kim Wehle. She’s professor of law at the University of Baltimore School of Law. All the guardrails I think that you’re talking about at least over the last four years have fallen because of delay.
Kimberly Wehle:
Well, and that’s the courts, and that’s, there’s a good thing and a bad thing about the courts too much I think has been pushed to the courts, and that could be a whole other show to talk about it. I mean, there’s too many things of massive importance as a matter of law and as a matter of society. That’s given to five people in robes because there’s others at majority. But the good news about the courts is it goes slowly because they’re thoughtful. It’s deliberative. They’re based on evidence. Decisions are based on evidence, precedent law, there’s appeals, there are procedural limitations. There’s an opportunity due process for both sides to have their say. I mean, that takes time. Politicians, social media, all of that doesn’t have those kinds of assurances that what the end result is. Even if we don’t agree with it, it at least purported to adhere to some process.
That’s fair. And there’s exceptions, right? I mean, I mentioned Alan Cannon, the Supreme Court. If there’s not any accountability, even judges are fallible. The framers understood that, right? Madison wrote, if men were angels, we wouldn’t need government, right? If you own an ice cream store, you could decide to hire the most loyal, honest employees. But my guess is you’ll probably have some procedures in place to make sure no one’s stealing from this cash register, even though you did your best to hire really good people. That’s the same with government. We need mechanisms to check the abuses of power. And as you indicated, the courts haven’t been able to do that. Congress hasn’t been able to do that. The ballot box really hasn’t been able to do that, and I have children, and I just hope that the spirit of America carries forward with integrity.
J. Craig Williams:
Well, it’s a difficult one because we’ve just been seeing, when we’ve been talking, we’ve been seeing and talking about fail after fail after fail.
Kimberly Wehle:
Yeah. And their democracies have died in the past.
Empires, the Roman Empire, other empires have died, and we’re very young. Democracy 246, 247 years old. We have no birthright of freedom, and I don’t think people really understand. I’m actually heading to do a Fulbright scholarship in the Netherlands next month where I’ll be working on a project that does empirical research, collects the viewpoints of regular citizens across six democracies, including the United States, to understand what people really believe a constitution means. And my guess is if you were to walk around and ask Americans, they wouldn’t really know what liberty is about. And I say that in part because I ask people when I do speeches, what does it mean to have a constitutional right? And they’ll say, well, it’s just my right. It’s just something that I’m born with. But what if someone takes your right away? What if you have a right to go into your house because you pay the mortgage or you pay the rent, and one day you show up and there’s police officers surrounding your house, your right is being infringed on.
What do you do? You hire a lawyer and you go to court and you get a judge to issue an order, and then the judge has its own mechanism to enforce that order. Your right is only so good as you’ve got a mechanism to enforce that, right? It’s not God-given. And that goes across all of our constitutional rights, and the one that I’m mostly concerned about, Craig, is our First Amendment rights. If we live in fear of retaliation from a government that has no constraints, that changes the dynamic of our interpersonal conversations, how we speak publicly, and if we have to police in our own minds how we speak, then you start thinking differently. Freedoms really come down to our ability to be who we are, and Americans frankly have taken them for granted, in part because we’ve never had to worry about ’em. But now we do.
J. Craig Williams:
Now we do well before the fall of democracy. Kim, where can we find your book?
Kimberly Wehle:
Well, thanks. It’s everywhere. It’s on Amazon. All my books are on Amazon. You can also look on my website, kim Wehle.com, WEH. I have information about all my work. Instagram at Kim Wehle, also Blue Sky.
J. Craig Williams:
Wonderful. Kim, it’s been a pleasure to have you on your show. Thank you very much.
Kimberly Wehle:
Thank you for having me, Craig.
J. Craig Williams:
Well, here are a few of my thoughts about today’s topic. Certainly, the object of mercy is a valid one and one that we should consider as society, but in our constitution, to grant that power to just one person, as we did to Kings in the past without any checks and balances, raises a lot of problems, as Kim pointed out in her discussion. So unlikely that we’ll ever see a constitutional amendment to limit pardon power, but it will be interesting to see in the next four years how it’s exercised. Good luck on that one. Well, that’s it for my ran on today’s topic. Let me know what you think. If you’d like what you heard today, please rate us on Apple Podcasts to your favorite podcasting app. You can also visit [email protected], where you can sign up for our newsletter. I’m Craig Williams. Thanks for listening. Please join us next time for another great legal topic. Remember, when you want legal, think Lawyer 2 Lawyer.
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