Preet Bharara says Trump self-pardoning would be 'almost self-executing impeachment'

(Image credit: CNN/Screenshot)

last updated 3 June 2018

President Trump's personal lawyer Rudy Giuliani says his client has "no intention" of pardoning himself, but former U.S. Attorney Preet Bharara isn't convinced. "I hate to keep harping on this point," he said on CNN's State of the Union Sunday, but "Rudy, just like [fellow Trump lawyer] Jay Sekulow, keeps coming up with things that end up being false. So when he says the president is not contemplating something, I have no faith in that whatsoever."

If Trump were convicted by Special Counsel Robert Mueller's campaign and then pardoned himself, Bharara said, he should not expect to retain power for long. "I think it would be outrageous for the sitting president of the United States to pardon [himself]," he said. "I think if the president decided he was going to pardon himself — I think that's almost self-executing impeachment."

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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.