Scaramucci says Trump pardoning himself is 'another one of those stupid hypotheticals'

published 23 July 2017

President Trump will not need to pardon himself, said new White House communications director Anthony Scaramucci in an interview on CNN's State of the Union Sunday, so discussing the legality of a presidential self pardon is pointless.

"We haven't even really looked into that," Scaramucci told host Jake Tapper, though he conceded discussing the topic with Trump attorney Jay Sekulow. "I'm not sure if [the president] has the right to pardon himself or not," Scaramucci continued, "but it doesn't matter anyway, because that's another one of those stupid hypotheticals. He's not going to have to pardon himself because he's done absolutely nothing wrong."

Sekulow, meanwhile, said in an ABC News appearance Sunday that "pardons have not been discussed" in the Trump White House. Trump tweeted about pardons Saturday, asserting his "complete power to pardon" in an update hot on the heels of a Washington Post report that the president is exploring whether he can use his broad constitutional pardon power on behalf of himself or members of his campaign or family.

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Bonnie Kristian was a deputy editor and acting editor-in-chief of TheWeek.com. She is a columnist at Christianity Today and author of Untrustworthy: The Knowledge Crisis Breaking Our Brains, Polluting Our Politics, and Corrupting Christian Community (forthcoming 2022) and A Flexible Faith: Rethinking What It Means to Follow Jesus Today (2018). Her writing has also appeared at Time Magazine, CNN, USA Today, Newsweek, the Los Angeles Times, and The American Conservative, among other outlets.

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