Trump's 'self-pardon' gambit has at least two fatal flaws: analysis

According to conservative columnist Jennifer Rubin, Donald Trump's decision to run for president in the belief it would keep him out of jail has been a bust and he needs to throw his support behind another Republican candidate for the presidency if wants to make a federal conviction disappear via a pardon.

In her column for the Washington Post, Rubin suggested that the former president likely thought by announcing he was making another run for the Oval Office would keep the DOJ from indicting him out of fears it would look like a political hit job.

However, as the 37-count indictment from special counsel Jack Smith would indicate, that belief was misplaced.

Now the former president is reportedly under the belief that he can "self-pardon" but, as Rubin points out, that is a non-starter according to legal experts.

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"Trump still doesn’t get it: To protect himself from prosecution and possible federal incarceration, the last thing he should want is to win the presidency. Trump, his supporters and the media have become infatuated with the myth of 'self-pardon,'" she wrote before pointing to a 2017 analysis from Laurence H. Tribe, Richard Painter and Norman Eisen that stated unequivocally, "The Constitution’s pardon clause has its origins in the royal pardon granted by a sovereign to one of his or her subjects. We are aware of no precedent for a sovereign pardoning himself, then abdicating or being deposed but being immune from criminal process.”

With that in mind, Rubin suggested the former president would be better served if he supported a rival who would grant him a pardon he can't deliver.

"Trump’s notion that he can avoid prosecution by winning an election has another obvious flaw," she added. "No president has the ability to pardon himself or anyone else for state crimes. Though he might imagine (falsely, in my view) that he can slip through the clutches of Manhattan prosecutor Alvin Bragg (at least with regard to a felony), he could still face prosecution in Georgia for his alleged election interference. If an indictment comes, as expected, in August, we will get a glimpse of the pound of evidence amassed against Trump, perhaps bolstered by testimony from his former associates."

"If Trump really wants to avoid prosecution — and punishment, if convicted — for alleged state crimes, he would have to arrange a plea, something he has refused to consider, or flee to a jurisdiction without extradition. Running for president won’t help those cases go away," she added.

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