The power to pardon is older than Western Civilization.  In Ancient Babylon, when kings came to the throne, they issued general pardons.  In Ancient Greece, the monarch Thrasybus issued a pardon in 403 B.C.E.  In Ancient Rome, kings issued clemency – that is, pardons for groups rather than individuals.

     In medieval times, both the Roman Catholic Church and local rulers issued pardons.  By the 1500s, pardons were in the hands of the monarch.  When the United States was founded, this was one of the functions transferred to the Executive Power.  Article II, section 2 of the Constitution gives the president “the power to grant Reprieves or Pardons for offenses against the United States, except in Cases of Impeachment.”

     That exception vastly limits the president’s pardoning power.  In 1787, founding father James Madison wrote “…if the President be connected, in any suspicious manner, with any person, and there be grounds to believe that he will shelter him, the House of Representatives can impeach him; they can remove him if found guilty.”  This view was expanded in the twentieth century.  By then, the truism that “No one may be judge in his own case” had taken hold.  The U.S. legal scholar and Harvard law professor Cass Sunstein supported and expanded this view. 

     In the 1970s, when Richard Nixon was indicted for the Watergate conspiracy, the Department of Justice ruled that “The President cannot pardon himself.”  That position holds true today.  In order to pardon himself, Pres. Trump would first have to admit that he did wrong.  He is unlikely to do this.  Summing up, former president Theodore Roosevelt declared “Patriotism means to stand by the country, it does not mean to stand by the president.”