So one of the last things Trump did was pardon a whole shitton of scumbags.

[conuly]

But not himself, because you can't do that.

Anyway, putting his self-serving pardons aside, I have a serious question about how pardons work. Theoretically, could an incoming president say "Look, we all know that the War on Drugs is both racist and bullshit, and also racist bullshit" and then grant a blanket pardon to everybody convicted of possession? Or would this president have to issue all the pardons individually?

Comments

[elf]

Granting a pardon doesn't mean admission of guilt, especially for the Deep State Conspiracy theorists -- it would only mean admitting "the conspiracy might falsify evidence and pull the wool over the eyes of a judge and jury, so I'm avoiding the problem by preemptively pardoning."

I expect what happened is, every lawyer he ran the idea past said, "err.... no, it won't hold up. Even in your very conservative and grateful-to-you SCOTUS, the courts are not going to allow that presidents can just pardon themselves of everything on their way out of office. Nobody wants that precedent."