Trump pardoning himself would be ‘self-executing impeachment’: Ex-US Attorney

NEW YORK, June 4 (APP):A former U.S. Attorney Preet Bharara has said that it would almost be a “self-executing impeachment” if President Donald Trump, who is under pressure from Special Counsel Robert Muller’s investigation into Russia’s role in the 2016 American elections, were to pardon himself.
“I think it would be outrageous for a sitting president of the United States [to self-pardon],” Bharara, who was born in India to a Sikh father and Hindu mother, told CNN’s news programme State of the Union on Sunday.
“I think if the president decided he was going to pardon himself, I think it is almost self-executing impeachment. Whether or not there is an argument that is not what the Framers could have intended.”
Trump fired Bharara last year after he refused to resign from his post as U.S. Attorney for the Southern District of New York following the presidential election.
Bharara’s comments came in response to an earlier statement made by Trump’s lawyer Rudy Giuliani, in which the attorney said the president has the power to pardon himself.
Giuliani, appearing on ABC’s “This Week” Sunday morning, said Trump could pardon himself, though has no plans to do so.
“He has no intention of pardoning himself,” Giuliani added. “That’s another really interesting constitutional question: Can the president pardon himself?”
“It would be an open question. I think it would probably get answered by, ‘gosh that’s what the Constitution says. And if you want to change it, change it. But, yeah.”
Bharara’s and Giuliani’s comments come after The New York Times published a confidential 20-page letter from Trump’s lawyers to special counsel Robert Mueller, who is leading an investigation into possible ties between the Trump campaign and Russian meddling in the 2016 presidential election.
In the letter, attorneys argued that the president couldn’t have obstructed justice because he has authority over all federal investigations. Lawyers also wrote that the Constitution gives Trump the broad authority to, “if he wished, terminate the inquiry, or even exercise his power to pardon.”