ALAN DERSHOWITZ: Can Trump, or any other president, pardon himself?

President Trump’s tweets about his broad power to pardon have raised the ultimate question: Can the president pardon himself? The answer is crystal clear! And anyone who gives you a different answer is misleading you, because there is only one correct answer.

Here it is: Nobody knows!

No president has ever tried it. No court has ever ruled on it. The framers of our Constitution never opined on it. History provides no guidance. There is a clean slate.

Yet pundits and academic know-it-alls will express certainty on both sides of this issue. That’s what pundits and academics do. Rarely do they acknowledge they don’t know, because as experts they are supposed to know. But this is one question whose answer they cannot know.

They will have opinions, as we all do. But many will deliberately confuse the is with the ought. If they want the answer to be no, they will pretend the answer is no. If they want the answer to be yes, they will pretend it is yes. That’s the way some pundits and academics advocate: by claiming to be describing what they are not so subtly prescribing.

This has been the case especially with regard to Trump.

So true.