'Hasn't been tested yet': Legal analyst envisions how Trump could warp pardon powers

Donald Trump sparked outrage by issuing sweeping pardons of all the Jan. 6 rioters, but a legal analyst speculated that the president could warp that authority beyond recognition.

Shortly after returning to office, the newly inaugurated president pardoned the insurrectionists, including Proud Boys leader Enrique Tarrio, who said after his release from a 22-year prison term on convictions for seditious conspiracy and other charges that the prosecutors who brought those cases should be prosecuted themselves.

"Even if these pardons are disgraceful or something that much of the public will not agree, but they were a perfectly valid exercise of the pardon power," said CNN legal analyst Elliot Williams, a former Justice Department official and legislative staffer. "I would go as far as to say the problem is the pardon power. Trump was just the symptom of it."

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Tarrio's comments hint toward the possibility that Trump might test the limits of his power by issuing prospective pardons for future crimes, Williams said.

"Someone called me yesterday and asked, 'Could a president prospectively pardon people for crimes that are committed between today and, say, Jan. 20, 2029?'" Williams said. "I said, 'Sure, maybe because it hasn't been tested yet.' It's probably the only power in American government that has no limitations on it, and if people are going to be upset at how presidents exercise power, and this goes back to a century of bad pardons, you know, perhaps Congress ought to get together and refine the pardon power or even amend the Constitution to limit it somewhat."

CNN's Stephen Collinson agreed that Tarrio seemed to be suggesting that violence over Trump's 2020 election loss might not be over.

"What happens the next time the president says, you know, 'Stand up, stand back and stand by?'" Collinson said. "Does that incite violence? But I think what he is taking the message from is that this election was made by many Democrats as a referendum on Jan. 6, and while it's very traumatic for a lot of people in Washington and for a bunch of Democrats, millions of conservatives are ready to move on and they don't see it as a impediment to Trump being in the White House, and that's just a fact, and it tells us where we are as a country."

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