Also, something related: If Trump were to pardon a conspirator to keep that person's silence, he would be guilty of obstruction of justice. Please read on from an earlier post before you object on the grounds that his pardon power with federal crimes is absolute.
Let's say that a sitting president were conspiring with someone to murder an opponent of the president. In this imagined scenario, the signal to commit the murder would come if and when the president were to pardon a specific person, someone who could be totally unrelated to the president, the intended victim, or any political issue related to the president.
Moving forward in this scenario, the president issues the pardon, the murder is committed, and the actual executioner is caught. Investigators then discover conclusive, provable evidence that the pardon was the signal for the murder to have taken place (for instance, proof via the uncovering of a note in the president's handwriting, or a voicemail message to the executioner, with the message in the president's voice, indicating what the notification to commit the murder would be, along with confirming testimony to that effect from the executioner).
Even though the president in this situation would have had the right to have issued the pardon, if his pardon was proved to be the signal for a murder to have been committed, then, while the pardon viewed in isolation would be legal, the proven use of the pardon as a signal to commit murder would constitute proof of the commission of the crime of murder and conspiracy to commit murder.
I think the constitutional provision granting absolute pardon power allows the president to actually execute a pardon without limit, but does not make it legal to use a pardon as a trigger of, or as a part of, the commission of a separate crime.
In the fictitious murder case, if that president were eventually to be charged, it would not be for the mere act of pardoning. The charge would be for using the pardon process to order the murder of somebody. It would be tantamount to using a phone to call a number (which is a legal act viewed in isolation), and to then commit fraud while using the phone. A person charged in such a case would not be charged with merely making a phone call......that person would be charged with committing fraud while using the phone to make a phone call.
Trump's pardoning of fellow conspirators in an effort to prevent his commission of a crime from being revealed via their testimony would be a similar in many respects to the fictional murder case. In any possible future case related to his pardoning fellow conspirators, he would not be charged with pardoning; he would be charged with obstructing justice via the use of the pardon.
And in this situation, since he would be guilty of using the pardon to obstruct justice (but NOT for merely making a pardon in and of itself), he would be impeachable. Would a GOP Congress and Senate follow through? They would have to......in this scenario, Trump would have issued pardons to prevent their truthful, incriminating testimony about deeply traitorous crimes involving our nation's intelligence and security RELATIVE TO RUSSIA. The outcry would be thundering, and they would have to remove him, I am sure. Remember.....the investigation involves helping Russia run intelligence operations against the US. Russia is the clincher!
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