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As President-elect Donald Trump’s inauguration approaches, his plan to issue pardons to rioters who stormed the U.S. Capitol on Jan. 6, 2021, as one of his first official presidential acts is an alarming prospect that could pave the way for dangerous consequences, according to a former federal prosecutor.
The “unprecedented nature” of the prospective presidential pardons is compounded by the fact that they would be issued to “people who were essentially his co-conspirators in crime,” law professor Frank Bowman told HuffPost. “That’s never happened,” he added in an article published Monday.
Among the chief concerns alarming to Bowman, a former state and federal prosecutor and author of High Crimes & Misdemeanors: A History of Impeachment for the Age of Trump, include Trump’s free reign from a Republican Party that “is far too cowardly to stand up to him.”
“The American public gave Trump the figurative permission to do what he’s about to do,” Bowman told HuffPost “He didn’t hide the fact that he was very likely to issue pardons to these people; he said it repeatedly during the course of his election campaign. I think it’s unspeakably scandalous and a terrible commentary on the state of our politics. I think it’s a bad harbinger of things likely to come.”
Congress is extremely unlikely to impeach Trump for “anything”—including misusing pardons, he said. “We have a Republican-majority Congress that can’t even bestir itself to reject lunatics from high offices," he said. “Are they going to impeach Trump for something the population has given him permission to do? Of course not.”
And the idea of blanket pardons being handed out to Jan. 6 rioters would create a devastating effect, Bowman said.
“Bottom line: Do I think this is really bad? Yeah, it’s essentially saying, henceforth, presidents who commit the gravest crimes against the Constitution, as long as they can stay in office, can use the power of the pardon to create a zone of impunity for all of their co-conspirators,” Bowman said in the HuffPost interview. “I think that’s terrible. I think that’s deeply dangerous.”
He concluded that the public response to “a president issuing lots and lots of pardons to people who assaulted the Capitol, hurt officers” would be “quite negative” but added: “There’s not a darn thing anybody can do.”
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